Newton Emerson: Too little hand-holding of North’s politicians brings problems

It could easily have turned into a wake. Instead, the 20th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement struck surprisingly positive notes.

The guest list alone suggested hopes for Stormont are recovering after February’s abortive deal.

Queen’s University Belfast, which hosted some of Tuesday’s events, had been warned months ago that Bill and Hillary Clinton’s attendance was conditional on Stormont being restored, and that a no-show by the Clintons would put Tony Blair’s presence in doubt.

This was widely reported after February’s deal collapsed.

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Hillary Clinton did not arrive this week to collect her honorary doctorate but Bill Clinton and Blair showed up – signalling they were not there to cry over the agreement's corpse.

The main event at Queen’s was a gathering of all the surviving political leaders from the 1998 negotiations.

Certainty

Exhortations to keep the peace process alive and admonitions to those who have let it down were to be expected, yet the overall tone from this gathering was certainty that the agreement would endure. Clearly, there have been briefings that a Stormont breakthrough remains likely in months rather than years.

There were straightforward statements from those still close to Stormont politics. Former DUP leader Peter Robinson said his successor, Arlene Foster, and her Sinn Féin opposite number, Michelle O'Neill, would soon do a deal – Foster and O'Neill were both sitting in the audience.

Gerry Adams insisted Stormont would be back, which matters when unionists believe he pulled it down.

The former Sinn Féin president misjudged the mood in the hall with a sour dig, saying: “Being a leader of unionism is the hardest job, because you have to come to terms with issues of equality and rights.”

But the fact that Adams was not on his best behaviour only lent weight to his comments on restoring devolution.

In separate interviews, former UUP leader David Trimble claimed to have insider knowledge that Brexit would shortly be resolved, with Stormont to be fixed soon after, while former taoiseach Bertie Ahern cheekily broke the Dublin consensus by saying the whole Border issue was exaggerated.

But it was the mere sight of this assemblage of the great and good, broadcast across the media all day, that broke the miserable mould of the past few years.

Stormont politics, which has come to represent the entire Belfast Agreement, has disappeared down a rabbit hole of parochial introspection. Even Northern Ireland’s thorny role in Brexit has not broadened our political argument – quite the opposite. This week was a reminder of when world leaders held our hands and helped us to see a bigger picture. It was useful for them to note, as all of them did, that the disputes we face now are trivial compared with those we faced 20 years ago.

How much hand-holding we still need is a question this week emphasised again. The British and Irish governments were represented at Queen's by northern secretary Karen Bradley and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney. They held a bilateral meeting the same day and committed to restarting Stormont talks as quickly as possible. The timetable for this seems to have advanced but otherwise it was the same anaemic position London and Dublin have taken in the 16 months since Stormont fell – and London's hands-off stance goes back much further.

Suspicions

It has been British government policy since the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition of 2010 to stand back and let Northern Ireland fix its own problems. That policy was well-intentioned and for a long time appeared successful – even responsible and respectful. But now it has intersected with suspicions that the DUP-Tory deal means the British government cannot intervene for reasons of its own self-preservation.

Blair’s presence in Belfast has sharpened this concern. Tales of how he cajoled Trimble into a deal have underscored how that option is not open to the British government today – or at least, how that option is not being exercised. Nationalists cling to fantasies about Britain selling unionists out, and unionists have a matching paranoia, but Blair managed to navigate between them under far more challenging circumstances.

Prime minister Theresa May and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar were not invited to Queen's as participants, as they had no role in 1998. But could they not have joined the audience, or just visited Belfast?

Other events would have welcomed them, or been readily arranged for them.

Varadkar restricted himself to a platitudinous tweet. May recorded a two-minute video tribute to the agreement for the Downing Street website, giving her the unfortunate appearance of a celebrity too busy to pick up a regional award.

After the agreement, too much hand-holding came to be seen as a problem – it encouraged Northern Ireland’s politicians to think they were world leaders, and the resulting egos were not always conducive to compromise.

After 16 months of deadlock, it must now be accepted by everyone that too little hand-holding brings problems of its own.