Unionists and republicans aren't equally to blame for crisis

In his News Letter column (1 January), Alex Kane says he gets accused of “lazy analysis” when he blames both the DUP and Sinn Fein for the lack of power-sharing at Stormont. I don’t think Alex’s analysis is lazy, but I can’t agree with his implication that the two parties are equally responsible for the breakdown of devolved government.

Undoubtedly, the DUP deserves criticism for its conduct in the Assembly. Its role in the RHI scandal was an indictment of its attitude to tax-payers’ money and it gave Sinn Fein a pretext to pull down the Executive. Equally, the party’s intransigence on some issues has allowed republicans to pose as progressives and attract sympathy from naive young liberals.

Yet it’s glaringly obvious that the DUP didn’t collapse government and hasn’t prevented it from being reformed. Indeed, the party has even shown signs that it’s prepared to be flexible on parts of the list of sanctimonious demands, or ‘red-lines’, set out by Sinn Fein.

When commentators try to decode what’s happening at Stormont Castle, it’s easy to get distracted by the tactics of deal-making and miss the brazen lies and distortions that constitute the entire republican strategy.

In his column, Alex didn’t really look at any of the themes of Sinn Fein’s case for refusing to share power with the DUP.

You could summarise them broadly in three parts. An untruthful claim that nationalists are not accorded “rights” and “equality”, a shameful attempt to focus Troubles’ “legacy” investigations on deaths caused by the state rather than the overwhelming majority of murders committed by the IRA and a stubborn insistence on a standalone Irish Language Act (not a face-saving ‘Culture Act’ as the DUP might prefer).

In addition, Sinn Fein has decided to advocate gay marriage, transparently so that it can portray unionists as old-fashioned and unreasonable. While, as a backdrop, nationalists won’t accept Northern Ireland’s entitlement as a full part of the UK to leave the EU with the rest of the country.

Surely it's important to look, even briefly, at all this context and offer an opinion on the merit of these republican positions?   

For its part, the DUP is willing to go back into government tomorrow with unrepentant murders and apologists for murder, who have repeatedly crashed power-sharing at the least excuse, to try to wheedle selfish concessions from political opponents and the government. What is blameworthy in making it difficult for them to do the same thing again?

It’s important for commentators, particularly unionist commentators, to criticise parties that fail to serve their voters properly, promote the Union effectively and tackle issues sensibly. It’s something else to give the impression that the DUP and Sinn Fein are equally to blame for what has happened over the past year, particularly when the media is awash with pundits who are eager to endorse republican claims.

Alex says that Northern Ireland needs ‘stable government’, which is not contestable. He doesn’t say whether he thinks that Stormont should provide that government.

If a deal would create another Executive that ducks important decisions, wastes public money and can be collapsed any time Sinn Fein doesn’t get its way, then, regrettably, direct rule is currently the more palatable option.