Newton Emerson: Northern Irish Greens’ fingerprints all over programme for government

You can get a good idea of what the Green Party has obtained in the draft programme for government by comparing it with April’s draft deal between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

The “shared island” section in both documents is of most interest to those of us in the North, especially where it is has been added to by the Greens, the only all-Ireland party in this proposed Irish government.

The Green Party of Northern Ireland, a stand-alone party within the UK, is also a regional branch of the Green Party of Ireland. A coalition deal must pass by a two-thirds majority of the party’s membership and northern members are a third of the total, making their verdict decisive.

If the Greens enter office in Dublin they will be the first 32-county party to hold that distinction by any meaningful measure.

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The 'shared island' section in the programme for government is five times longer than its predecessor, with Green fingerprints all over it

The first comparison to note between April and this month’s plans is what has not changed. The vision is still of “working towards a shared island” through “consensus”, as opposed to the Sinn Féin model of pushing for a Border poll. The term “united Ireland” does not appear and even “united island”, used in April, has been expunged.

However, the vision has been given far more focus. This section in the programme for government is five times longer than its predecessor, with Green fingerprints all over it.

The promise to “strengthen the all-island economy” now includes references to planning frameworks, land use, water management, and pollution. The Greens will also have influenced new specifics on North-South environmental protection, marine conservation, energy security and university collaboration.

British-Irish relations are to have environmental priorities and involve the administrations in Scotland and Wales, a Northern Ireland perspective that mirrors how the Greens are structured across the UK.

In April, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil pledged to help deal with the legacy of the Troubles and implement recent deals to restore and reform Stormont.

Full implementation of these deals is now described as “crucial” and legacy is to include supporting Stormont’s current strategy on tackling paramilitarism.

While the Greens are not in the Northern Executive, there is a sense of them communicating its interests.

A new pledge on cross-Border police cooperation and information sharing may not have come from the Greens but will have had their backing – this is something they have no qualms about advocating.

Brexit is the point expanded upon most in the latest document. The new government’s entire Brexit policy is set out in the “shared island” section. It is hard to discern what influence the Greens had on this as their position on Brexit is essentially the same as that of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. However, the programme for government pays more tribute to northern interests than the two larger parties might have been expected to do on their own.

Shortly after April’s draft deal, the Green Party issued a 2,600-word response, set out as 17 questions. Not one word referred to Northern Ireland, North-South co-operation, a shared island, or Brexit.

So whatever influence the Greens have had on the draft programme for government must have been driven by their northern branch asserting itself.

Yet the northern Greens seem conflicted on a deal they have clearly had some sway in drafting.

Clare Bailey, leader of the Green Party in Northern Ireland, has abstained from supporting it. A statement from the northern party said the draft deal was “a welcome development” with “a strong Green agenda running throughout” but members and representatives are openly divided.

Bailey is nobody’s fool, and nobody should underestimate the constitutional balancing act she was already managing in Belfast before Ireland’s general election turned it into a game of three-dimensional chess. But inventing her own form of abstentionism is a poor answer. It invites the jibe, usually levelled at Sinn Féin, of wanting to be in government and opposition at the same time.

Opting out of the realities of southern politics is a tempting approach to the challenge of being an unaligned all-Ireland party in the North

If the DUP can have a confidence-and-supply agreement with the Conservatives and Sinn Féin can lead a powersharing executive with the DUP, the Greens need have no fear of unionist or republican jibes for being part of an Irish government or ruling with centre-right and establishment parties.

Their real concern comes from within. While Green Party members across Ireland lean strongly to the left, the northern political environment adds some complicating factors. A British type of anti-Toryism can be applied reflexively and imprecisely to Fine Gael. Opting out of the realities of southern politics is a tempting approach to the challenge of being an unaligned all-Ireland party in the North.

In last December’s UK general election, the Greens in Northern Ireland entered an anti-Brexit pact that required them, by the brutal maths of Westminster contests, to stand aside across their heartlands and lose the momentum of that year’s so-called centrist surge.

Now they need to show the same maturity stepping on to the stage that they showed stepping off it.