"The transition from the elections to the negotiations will be automatic and immediate". This sentence from Mr Major's Commons statement yesterday contains the essence of the political formula now on offer to all the parties in Northern Ireland. They must decide whether their dissatisfactions with the hybrid, electoral method decided upon by the British government to select representatives, are sufficiently weighty to overturn the real prize of a potential negotiated settlement.
The formula on offer is unencumbered with political preconditions of the kind that have previously been identified by nationalist parties. Elections on May 30th are to lead automatically on to the opening of negotiations on June 10th. Arms decommissioning is to be addressed, not resolved, before other matters are considered. Participation in the proposed forum is not required of those who wish to take part in the substantive talks and it has no legislative or administrative function.
Most important, acceptance of the six Mitchell principles would be the key to entering the political process. The principles contain a commitment to exclusively democratic means of resolving the conflict. Necessitating a restoration of the IRA ceasefire, they are the irreducible precondition to the negotiations - all the more legitimate from the nationalist point of view for having been drafted by that international commission.
Concealed within the admittedly hybrid character of the election process put forward by Mr Major yesterday, there is a wider and potentially mutually acceptable formula to get the real negotiations going. As the Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, said yesterday, it is necessary for all concerned to step back from, the immediate controversy about the need for elections' and a forum, in order for the parties to decide where they want to go by the end of the whole process.
It may well be necessary to swallow some unpalatable things in order to get there. The Government has evidently decided not to expend too much political energy in vociferous denunciation of the electoral formula, in the belief that the ground rules for the transition to talks are more important. The Tanaiste, Mr Spring, indicated that this is best left to the Northern parties to quarrel over.
It is very much to be hoped that they will agree to differ over the methodology of the elections in order to concentrate on the substance of the talks. The British government found it had to combine several techniques in an attempt to reach a broadly acceptable formula. In time honoured fashion they have produced one that is somewhat less acceptable to nationalist than unionist parties.
But nearly all parties should gain access to the talks through this process. Nationalists should not lose sight of the prize of inclusive talks that appears to have, been brought closer by developments in recent days. Elections, however adversarial in tone and tribal in voting patterns, are not an insurmountable obstacle to that fundamental objective.