Well of course there IS a Deal. The only requirement is that DUP and Sinn Féin reach an agreement. The other Parties in the so-called “power-sharing” Executive saw the Agreement forty five minutes before Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness went public.
By the way, it is amazing how DUP and Sinn Féin can talk up a defeat into a victory.
For make no mistake, they are both defeated. DUP threatened the collapse of the Executive on the basis that the IRA Army Council was still in existence….and the fig leaf they have been given is that paramilitary activity will be “monitored”.
And Sinn Féin and Welfare Reform. Well the decision making process has been re-allocated to Westminster.That would be the uber republicans who dont even take seats in Westminster. They have sold out.
The logical step for this all-Ireland Party is to write the same policy into their Dáil manifesto.
Of course all political parties would have to find a solution and thats the trade-off. But really the shock in the Agreement is the total abandonment of Victims. After nearly eighteen years of delaying tactics…both DUP and Sinn Féin and of course the British have just given up on the “legacy” issues.
Truth has been officially abandoned. Justice has been officially abandoned. How can David Ford stay in Government as Minister for Justice?
Can SDLP sign up to this? No.
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
Would now be a good time to leave the executive for the SDLP?
The best time would have been in 2011. When Alliance got a second seat (a gift of DUP-SF) in the Executive, it subverted Democracy.
93,000 votes got SDLP (and UUP) one seat.
51,000 votes got Alliance one seat…plus the DUP-SF gift.
We should have walked then.
Problem is since all the way back to 1974 the SDLP have bought into power sharing big time.
This is a SDLP baby with knobs on.
The SDLP will never walk away from this.
It’s LetsGetAlongism writ large.
Its a good point.
But I dont think it has to be five parties.
The real problem for SDLP is realising it got some things wrong in the 1990s and thats easier “under new management”.
Never in a month of Sunday’s will the SDLP rock the boat.
That would be the opposite of everything they stand for.
Can imagine FJH is viewed with suspicion by your average SDLP staffer.
Wonder if they read this blog???
I am treated with deep suspicion.
A lot of rank and file SDLP members read this blog. And it is always gives me a buzz when someone comes up to me and says “are you FitzjamesHorse?”
Usually its rank and file older people.
A few senior people read it but not everyone admits it LOL.
Staffers read it….or rather “monitor” it….as they do with all media and social media. They tend not to say anything to me. To some extent they need everything to be 100 per cent “on message” and I am 90 per cent “on message”..
It is an arrangement that works very well.
The staffers who work for MLAs are actually very different. Nowadays it has become fashionable for MLAs to walk around with an entourage of young staffers who have watched every episode of West Wing….but the stay-at-home staffers in constituency offices are brilliant to me.
Strangely last weekend most people (including councillors and staffers) mentioned the post I published a few weeks ago on a new recognisable kinda “staffer” who are now embedded in the Party Pyramid.
Sometimes I make serious points in a frivilous way and frivilous points in a serious way…..and there was one little amusing incident at weekend which perhaps typifies how the Party views me.
Cant quite find the words to post about it….as it was a minor irritation …but something needs said.
Can’t wait you hear it. My guess is they can’t control you and fear you would show them up. They would like your barb but fear it a bit too much. I always think it the test of any manager/leader at any level to spot talent and use it. you’ve just told the SDLP what they should do, grow some nuts and call out the emperors new clothes. I don’t get the fines thing. The folks who give us the money are fining us their money if we don’t do what we are told. But the truth is they can’t not pay. They can’t just stop paying for health and education etc. Sometimes I wish I could apply the same logic to my kids and fine them the money I give them to eat. Starve my kids. They could do with knowing proper hunger, apparently that is wrong. lol.