The older I get …the more I think I have seen everything there is to see…at least twice.
So SDLP are heading for Opppsition benches. And Alliance are going nowhere.
Would Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness really be confident about a Justice Minister if they did not have a plan in place. Possibly talks with the Greens and/or Claire Sugden (Independent Unionist).
Let me mention G B Newe. He was a Catholic who actually served as a junior Minister at the fag end of the “old Stormont”.He was that rarest of things…a Catholic Unionist and was brought into the cabinet to show that Brian Faulkner’s regime had Catholic support as well as being “liberal”. Newe was unelected and Catholics regarded him as convenient “Uncle Tom”.
Have we a new Newe….so to speak?
An unelected person ready on the sidelines to perform the duties of Justice Minister?
Keeping An Eye On the Czar of Russia 
Looking at SF’s recent record in the regional administration at Stormont there is a slight whiff of the same aroma that has been hanging around the ANC government in South Africa for the last several years. Not good, not good at all.
Presumably DUP-SF have a Plan B…Sugden or Agnew.
But it looks like Christopher Stalford got it right. SF “are happy to be junior partner in a centre right coalition”
A two-Party coalition exppses the nature of it much more than five parties. And I get the feeling SF have blundered into this. Certainly any change of SDLP Leadership was going to mean Opposition was a serious prospect.
And Alliance were only ever going to do a deal if their “unique” status was recognised.
DUP will be happier than SF. After all…Justice can always go back to Westminster.
But is there a possibility of a non-politician or retired politician stepping in….John Alderdice, Nuala O’Loan (hardly) or Anna Lo?
Unelected appointee to a high profile “government” dept. in the Six Counties? Could they really be so blind to the dire optics? Democracy me arse!
Alliance are still there to be bought.
To misquote Shaw (?) we have established what Alliance are, we are watching them haggling over the price.
I make a different prediction: that SF and DUP are going to appoint an someone from their own DUP and SF MLAs to the post, perhaps alternating annually (first one party, then the other), in a similar way to how they do for the Speaker now.
I think that two ministers at same time is more likely and theyd go for likes of Peter Weir, a barrister who is under-used on their benches. He is ex-UUP.
The SF Minister? Would have to be someone without a history….Gildernew, Kearney, O’Muilleoir.?
You know my thoughts!
Eamonn McCann for the Justice Ministry, think of the fun 🙂
Maybe Quintin Oliver.
One thing for sure: nobody outside of SF and DUP seem to have a clue.
They probabbly have a name from before Election.