If You Ask Me
with Alex Kane

Next Tuesday the most improbable coupling since Jade Goody and a community relations charter will be the focus of a media frenzy. Prime ministers, presidents and papal envoys, along with a gallery of moth eaten ghosts from the past, will congregate at Stormont to give their blessing to the union of the DUP and Sinn Fein.

In one sense it is an unholy alliance. As unholy and as unlikely as that moment when Dr Frankenstein guided a bolt of lighting into his cobbled-together abomination. Yet, in another sense, this saga has been as plodding, torturous and predictable as a Jeffrey Archer novel.

In January 1970 the Provisional IRA was formed - the result of a split between the “softies” in the old IRA willing to give the nod to parliaments in London, Dublin and Belfast, and the new hard men of the north who wanted modern weapons to fire up the final phase of the armed struggle. At that point Martin McGuinness became a key figure in modern republicanism.

In April 1970 a candidate for the Protestant Unionist Party won the Bannside by-election in the dying days of the old Stormont, followed weeks later, by his capture of North Antrim in the General Election. At that point Ian Paisley became a key figure in modern unionism.

The careers of both men have been inextricably linked since then - the boom of rhetoric and the counter-boom of terrorism cascading down the decades as each delivered the sort of fear that the other could exploit and feed upon within their respective communities.

But neither has been able to obliterate the other, nor persuade successive governments to cut a deal that suited their side alone. Sinn Fein hasn’t been smashed. Stormont hasn’t crumbled. Majority rule hasn’t been restored. The Brits haven’t gone home.

Instead, the now aged and worn down protagonists have agreed a deal built upon mutual loathing and mutual veto - a locked at the wrists freak show in which both pretend that they have the upper hand.But this isn’t peace. This is stalemate. Sectarianism institutionalised and bolstered by the carve-up of political office and the balkanisation of departments and super councils.

This is us and them in its purest form, with the centre ground mired down and occupied by philosophical and psychological extremes. Themselves Alone are now in government - governing not in the interests of Northern Ireland as such, but rather in the interests of Northern Ireland as they see it.

In a few months time when the media hoopla has moved on and the plaudits have stopped ringing in their ears, we will discover whether these old enemies can, in fact, do the business and seal the deal.

My own view is that a government, based on lies, insincerity, and party political self-interest, will prove fragile to say the least. So, how long before we hear a collective prayer for the return of Direct Rule?

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