Can't resist this. Last Wednesday at a sort-of press conference after the British-Irish Inter-Governmental Council that Brian Cowen and our proconsul jointly chair, the said proconsul was dutifully retailing the lie that a majority of unionists support the Good Friday Agreement. They do, they do.
Reporter: Secretary of State, if that is so, why has half Mr Trimble's parliamentary party withdrawn its support from him?
Proconsul: You'd have to ask Mr Trimble about that.
Aargh. Pathetic. Typical of the infuriating, dismissive responses British blow-ins get away with. Unfortunately only RTE broadcast that gem which displayed more about the arrogance and contempt in which British politicians hold people here than a hundred spinning statements from our proconsul's press office. Still, at least the reporter in question had managed to show our nice proconsul has hidden shallows.
Breathtaking all the same that our Welsh wizard tried it. Does he expect us to believe that he's the only person not aware that the reason Tony Blur is afraid to hold an election is quite simply because not enough unionists will vote for pro-agreement candidates? Worse, the two main unionist parties have not managed to produce enough pro-agreement candidates between them, so no matter who unionists vote for, Tony Blur can't get the result he wants. It doesn't matter how often our proconsul stands beside a potted plant, no palm tree being available, intoning his mantra, no sensible person here believes him.
The truth is the British administration here is up a sheugh without a paddle. All available evidence is that they are beginning to sink deeper into the mess as they burl around in agitation for something, anything to save Trimble. The plain fact is that David Trimble cannot unite the UUP any more than Jeffrey Donaldson can. Nearly half the party is implacably opposed to either of them. Sooner or later someone else will have to be found. As yet no compromise candidate is in sight, but messing about with the agreement to shore up a leader who will never be able to deliver his party is the road to nowhere.
The latest development appears to be this. The British are pushing to set up Trimble's Independent Monitoring Body (IMB) in 'shadow form' so that it can issue some form of report in the autumn which will enable Trimble to recommend to the UUP that they should enter an executive. The IMB's role would be based on paragraph 13 of the Joint Declaration which demands an 'immediate, full and permanent cessation' of all forms of paramilitary activity which is listed, but goes onto include "involvement in riots" and the demand that the "exiled must feel free to return in safety".
What do those last two mean? What is 'involvement in riots'? Who by? Individual Sinn Féin members? People the PSNI say they 'know' to be members of the IRA? Worse still, people the DUP say they saw? Suppose a returned exile gets thumped in a pub or club? Did republicans put the person who thumped him up to it? Prove they didn't.
A major problem with the IMB is that although it was created for him, Trimble doesn't own it. The DUP and his own anti-agreement dissidents can and will use its provisions vexatiously to embarrass Trimble. Perhaps its biggest flaw is that anti-agreement unionists will ridicule its findings because they know the IMB is a makeshift fig leaf for Trimble to wear on return to an executive. For them, it confirms Trimble in his role as a puppet of Blair, the acceptable face of unionism who will carry out the joint policy of Dublin and London.
The development and expansion of the role of the IMB is alarming: it's well beyond any reading of the agreement's monitoring provisions. The IMB becomes the arbiter for when or if to hold an election. In the absence of a favourable report from the IMB there can't be an election because, as Tony Blur said last week, there must be a "realistic prospect that elections would produce a viable executive". In effect the IMB will recommend not whether SF should be expelled from an executive, but whether it should get into one. Where's that in the GFA? The final catch is that, even if the IMB submits a clean sheet, namely no IRA activity, simple arithmetic indicates there's no prospect of a viable executive anyway since the UUP is dysfunctional as a political party. Even after an election in the best possible circumstances, how many UUP assembly members would vote for power-sharing?
Perhaps that's another question for our Welsh wizard?
