Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

The chancellor of the exchequer is still in the House of Commons defending his budget statement.  One of the eye catching measures announced by George Osborne this afternoon is an additional 1% cut in corporation tax , aimed at stimulating growth, on top of the 1% which was already planned.  In order to signal that Britain is ’open for business’ the rate will also fall in the succeeding three years, reaching 23% in 2014. Appropriately enough, just before the budget debate, Owen Paterson announced that the consultation paper on devolving corporation tax raising powers to Northern Ireland will be published tomorrow.  It’s argued that we are peculiarly disadvantaged when it comes to attracting international investment, because our near neighbours in the Irish Republic enjoy a CT rate of just 12.5%. The Secretary of State has long championed the idea that the Stormont Assembly should be allowed to cut taxes in order to make Northern Ireland a more competitive destination...

My column from Friday's Irish News (not online). In seven days time the assembly will dissolve ahead of May’s election.  That means anyone who’d got used to the current cuddly relationship between the DUP and Sinn Féin will have to readjust. For a six week period the parties will inhabit only one of Northern Ireland’s parallel political realities.   It used to be known as normality.  It’s a place where the ‘budget buddies’ are implacable foes. So where a week or two ago, he was lauding Caitriona Ruane and Conor Murphy for their prowess in the executive, DUP leader Peter Robinson will claim he’s the man to halt Sinn Féin in its tracks. His colleague in the first minister’s office, Martin McGuinness, will cease being a responsible partner in government and resume his role as chief menace to loyal Ulster. Meanwhile the Shinners will stop acting like Sammy Wilson‘s backing chorus.  Instead we’ll hear a lot  about the “united Ireland project” which is rollin...

In Friday's News Letter I contributed a column on the budget debate to the paper's  Political Review .  If you can stomach the scarily detailed headshot (seriously guys - invest in some serious airbrushing technology!) it's now online . Towards the end of the article I consider the upshot of the debate. Michael McGimpsey and Danny Kennedy, the UUP’s executive members, voted explicitly against the budget. Alex Attwood, the SDLP’s social development minister, simply absented himself from the chamber, in order to avoid breaking the assembly’s ministerial code.  It’s an odd way of doing business. But then the system of government in Northern Ireland is a strange system. On the one hand the smaller parties say their voices aren’t heard in the supposed five-party coalition.  On the other hand, the larger parties claim that the UUP and SDLP are prepared to accept the trappings of power, but refuse to take responsibility for taking the difficult decisions.  Neither ...