Paisley era coming to an end

Ian Paisley Jr became the first Minister to resign from Northern Ireland’s Stormont administration this week. His departure is widely seen as a signal that his father’s retirement as First Minister is only months away.

On one level this is a significant demonstration that democratic accountability is possible within Stormont’s cross-community coalition system. Yet it also reflects a new threat to the stability of the Executive.

From my latest post at OurKingdom.

Comments

[WorldbyStorm]

1.

Problem is, which is it, threat or demonstration? Impossible to be sure, obviously, at this stage, but if I were to put money on it I'd say the latter if only because it's in no-ones interests to see it fall asunder at this point (and the excuses to do so are becoming very thin on the ground).

[Tom Griffin]

2.

I suppose the actual result in Dromore is telling in that the effect of the TUV's intervention was to hand the seat to the UUP.

The danger is that the TUV will provoke the DUP into taking a hardline that paralyses the executive. Perhaps Robinson will deal with that dilemma better than Paisley would, in which case the accountability argument will be vindicated. I'm sure he won't be doing much chuckling anyhow.

[WorldbyStorm]

3.

yeah, it's difficult to get over that. Surely from TUV purely political considerations would lead them to abhor the UUP getting a seat. But I guess the ideology of revenge plays a bigger part... Can't see Robinson or the rest of the crew being too keen to collapse things... can you?

[Tom Griffin]

4.

No I can't see Robinson being to keen to collapse things, but they won't be giving much away.
They haven't up to now either, so it was interesting that SF performed fairly well, but perhaps that is reading too much into a council by-election.
Speaking of which, I thought this was interesting from Suzanne Breen:

"The DUP had thought it faced no credible threat from the right wing of unionism. Now it realises that a strong TUV vote at the next Westminster election could cost it three seats – North Belfast and Upper Bann (to Sinn Féin), and South Antrim (to the Ulster Unionists). A loss of a few Assembly seats could leave Sinn Féin the largest party at Stormont and hence entitled to the First Minister position, a disaster for the DUP.

"Under a Robinson leadership, the party hopes to win back most of the ground lost to the TUV. "There will be a clear break with the past. Power-sharing with Sinn Féin will continue but the message will go out, 'no more chuckle brothers'. The Shinners will be told they're on their own," says a source."

I assume there is a big element of DUP scaremongering there, but the TUV could certainly make things interesting.