Consociational contention is a front for MOPEry

Brian Feeney consistently produces republican tinged commentary which belies his status as a supposed constitutional nationalist. Quite simply he reviles and detests unionists.

Feeney’s latest contribution is effectively his contention that the people of Northern Ireland should forever be denied accountable government or democratic norms, basically because he believes we can’t be trusted with them. It doesn’t take too much reading between the lines to uncover Feeney’s subtext. The electorate cannot be allowed to hold the executive to account because unionists are a majority and can’t be trusted:

“The arrangement is the price unionists have to pay for making themselves so objectionable over the 50 years they had a free hand here. “


Northern Ireland is forever to be consigned to the status of Lebanon, because Feeney is a MOPE and unionists are in his view irreformable, this despite the fact that every suggestion of introducing opposition at the Assembly has been presaged by an acknowledgment that it must be based on cross community coalitions.

Feeney’s article is vicious, sectarian bile from a commentator who does not want Northern Ireland to be a better place, or to work more effectively, because that would undermine the case for a United Ireland. If he truly believes that this “consociational” model is necessary in a divided society, he would apply it to any All-Ireland model he aspires to.

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