It is now apparent to me, and no doubt to others, that the fundamental reason the DUP does not want to return to Stormont is that it does not fancy the job of reforming and restoring public services.
The picture there is indeed genuinely challenging. Waiting lists in the Health Services are many multiples of times worse than they are elsewhere in the UK and Ireland (where they are already grim); some services are effectively no longer available (if you are waiting years for diagnosis, the service is effectively unavailable); workforce morale has hit rock bottom in the absence of reasonable pay and conditions (one clinician noted they had even taken the hooks away to hang your coat when you got to work - basics like that sound daft but make people feel valued); GPs are inaccessible in some locations (and even where they are accessible, there is scant time to take to get an overall picture - some consultations literally last 15 seconds by phone); people lucky enough to have savings are having to raid them to go private (this can mean forking out £15k for a hip replacement just to stay mobile); and reform is still poorly understood (even by commentators who claim to understand it). In Education, the picture may even be worse: school buildings are creaking; there are far too few special educational needs places; reform of the overall system is outright rejected; there is scant strategic thinking to ensure the system actually matches the needs of modern business and industry (compare the Republic of Ireland, which is light years ahead in this regard); and there are simply too many schools leaving too many resources allocated to administration rather than pupils and teachers. Infrastructure has run out of money to repair roads; the arts are in desperate need; in some cases public sector bodies are unable to function properly because board members cannot be recruited. It is a sorry picture, to say the least - and it would take skill and leadership to put it right. It is perhaps small wonder the DUP is uninterested, and even Sinn Fein is unwilling to countenance the reform of the institutions which would give it prime responsibility for cleaning up a mess which it played no small role in creating by its own walk-out and inability in government to embrace meaningful reform.
Yet, curiously, in other ways things are actually going rather well in Northern Ireland. Consider the following, all verified by the Office for National Statistics or recent parliamentary reports:
- Latest data published this week suggest that, since 2019, Northern Ireland's economy has grown 6.3% (versus -0.5% in the UK);
- Productivity growth in Northern Ireland in that same timeframe has far outstripped every other UK region;
- Likewise since 2019, Northern Ireland is the only country of the UK where life expectancy has increased (now ranking well into the top half of the 12 UK regions);
- Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where real-terms earnings are now above what they were before the 2008 Credit Crunch;
- "Relative poverty" has long been lower in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the UK but, since 2019, even "absolute" poverty (i.e. that which takes no account of housing costs) has been lower;
- Average income after housing costs overtook the rest of the UK during 2022, and at current trends even average income before housing costs (where Northern Ireland moved up into the top half of the 12 UK regions last year) is on track to overtake the rest of the UK by mid-decade;
- Northern Ireland is the only region in the UK where house prices are currently rising - even with this, house prices are less than six times average income (versus nine times in the UK as a whole);
- Northern Ireland has higher share of owner-occupiers than the rest of the UK (71% versus 64%) and a higher share of people owning their home outright (and thus sheltered from rising mortgage rates; 43% versus 35%); and
- In the most recent survey (albeit pre-Covid), Northern Ireland ranked 4 among the 12 UK regions for "affluence", and it still consistently ranks number 1 in the UK in annual surveys of "happiness".
If nothing else, it pays occasionally to note that Northern Ireland is not quite the disaster zone it seems to like to present itself as. This is perhaps all summed up by the elderly lady I met in a driveway while canvassing in May, who said quite openly, almost loudly enough for all the neighbours to hear, "Isn't it all terrible, what are we going to do?" before moving closer to me and almost whispering, as if she were telling a secret, "All the same, we haven't really got it so bad, have we?"
There is a serious political point here, also, though. This is in fact no time to be tampering significantly with the broad social and financial settlement which has attained recent economic growth and a markedly higher standard of living (even if somewhat by accident). On the contrary, fundamental policies such as the Protocol (which, for the record, won't suit the DUP) or lower household taxes (which likely will suit the DUP) seem to be working exactly as they are supposed to. Northern Ireland has major structural deficiencies not just in its public services but also in its economy, but fundamentally its economic settlement is functioning well.
The "Barnett Squeeze" (which is highly technical but basically represents a failure of the Barnett Formula, used for allocating public money to each country of the UK for domestic public funding, to take account of demonstrable need) does create a legitimate case for a funding uplift for public services in Northern Ireland, particularly to support reform of health and social care and to save some services outright. The reward for this will be a greater long-term contribution from Northern Ireland to overall UK revenues as its economy grows and its people grow increasingly healthy and prosperous, a trend already evident.
In other words, it is time perhaps to stop obsessing about the immediacy (as humans, sadly, are prone to do), and focus instead on our collective medium-term interests. In doing so, we will find there is a lot to agree on, and a firm basis for the restoration of devolution with significant challenges to face, but also with considerable hope for a better future.
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