Jeff Peel's Diary

Ian Parsley continues to do good political stuff since his defection from the Alliance to the Conservatives.  I am especially heartened by the fact that he refers to his new Party as the Conservative Party – making no reference to the crazy auntie in the attic – the UUP.  Read his piece in the Belfast Telegraph. 

The Conservative Party is the Party he joined – not the conjoined mish-mash that the UUP likes to spin.  It was notable that Ian chose to join the Conservatives – a Party that, increasingly, represents right of centre but socially liberal thinking.  And I’m pretty sure that’s why he made the choice that he did.

The fact that the Conservative Party (and not the dog’s dinner UCUNF) is sufficiently appealing to young and forward thinking politicians like Ian shows that the Conservative offer here is enough in its own right.  Increasingly the UUP is side-lining itself and its relevance. 

The Conservative Party is in the ascendancy in the United Kingdom and, increasingly, in Northern Ireland.  It’s about time that it made this more clear to its UUP “partner”.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  The UUP is Utterly, Utterly Pointless if the Conservative Party is active and campaigning here.

I watched Nick Robinson on last night’s 10 O’Clock News and he was explaining how odd it seemed that the various Party leaders – Conservative, Labour and LibDem – were trying to outdo each other in terms of their readiness for cuts.  Gordon didn’t just say the ‘C’ word once in his speech to the TUC yesterday, he said it time after time in rapid succession. 

Meanwhile, what about here?  Which politicians, here, are talking about cuts?

The public sector accounts for 63% of the economy of Northern Ireland, which is substantially higher than 43% of the United Kingdom as a whole. In total, the British government subvention totals around £5,000m, or 20% of Northern Ireland’s economic output.

Now, if all the political parties that aspire to form the next UK government are talking about cuts it kinda figures that this is bound to have an impact on that part of the United Kingdom that most depends on the public sector.  If the public sector is the biggest employer here, and the cuts are to the public sector, then one would think that politicians here would be bracing themselves – and planning for a new world order. 

Surely it would be appropriate that money wasting nonsense like the devolution of policing and justice should be taken off the political agenda.  After all the effect of squandering of the block grant in this way will result, inevitably, in greater cuts to healthcare or education. 

The fact is that our local political parties are incapable of having a sensible discussion about budgetary allocations and strategic planning.  Instead of participating in the national debate about how we get out of the unholy economic mess we’re in, they seem even more determined to condemn Northern Ireland, forever, to its status as a Potemkin economy.

Owen Polley over on Three Thousand Versts has picked up on Jeff Dudgeon’s wonderfully scathing analysis of the McCloskey Civil Rights Summer School – featuring an anti-Conservative and, from the sound of things, very defensive Monica McWilliams. 

The reason for the anti-Conservative hostility, of course, is the fact that Shadow Secretary of State, Owen Paterson, has been fabulously under-impressed with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission’s “majority” report – that argued the need for a Norn-Iron only version of a Bill of Rights. 

Owen has been much more publically supportive of the Minority report that showed much more common sense.  The likelihood is that the Conservatives will take a very dim view of regional “Rights Bills” being introduced in Northern Ireland or any other devolved region.  Indeed Dominic Grieve made that pretty much crystal clear during a recent visit.  Therefore Monica McWilliams is well out of step with reality and common sense.

However, that’s not the point I was intending to make.  The point arises from a comment made by Jeff in his report:  “Alasdair McDonnell, almost alone, spoke of the Bill of Rights proposal and said “the SDLP would not stand idly by” if it was deferred or unpicked.”

Such posturing by the SDLP and by Alasdair McDonnell is typical.  More than any other local political “Party” the SDLP has lost all touch with its constituency and the issues at issue.  The SDLP’s threats of “not standing idly by” are taken as read to be near certain pledges to stand idly by.  Lack of idling would hardly be that noteworthy in any case.  Alastair will huff and puff a bit – as is his tendency – and ignore issues that are really bothering his middle class voters – like the SDLP’s failure to take a stand on the issue of academic selection; or the SDLP’s abject failure to stand for anything other than ill-defined human rights. 

However, on the plus side, there must now be a real hope that Alastair and the SDLP can be unseated in South Belfast if only the Conservatives can select a candidate to appeal to constituents fed up with the fact that none of these “human rights merchants” have anything useful to offer in the way of real-world, practical politics.

My last post about the inappropriateness of the new Chief Constable of the PSNI defining himself as a committed Christian resulted in quite a few comments and quite a few emails.  Most were supportive – although Mark Devenport was a little dismissive when he suggested that, “It’s a fair debating point, although given the level of church attendance here I can’t see too many people rushing to the barricades on this one.”

With respect to Mark, (and I have a great deal of respect for him), the stats don’t really back up his argument.

In Northern Ireland there is an accepted wisdom that it is perfectly OK for politicians, senior civil servants, anyone in public office, to spout off about their various religious beliefs.  The defence is that because we are a church-going society it’s somehow OK that people feel compelled to tell us about their bizarre world-views borne out of religious conviction.  Well, I beg to differ.

The majority of Northern Ireland’s adult population does, in fact, NOT attend church on a regular basis.  Church-going here is more popular than in other parts of the UK – but research by the Tear Fund shows that only 45% of people here attend church on a regular basis.  This, presumably, means that the majority of adults here are not regular attenders.  Indeed some 44% of NI respondents in the tear fund survey are either “de-churched” or “non-churched”.  In short, in Northern Ireland, there are as many people here who have little if any contact with any church as those who attend a church regularly.  Close to 1 in every 5 people here have no religion at all and are either Atheist or Agnostic. 

Therefore, if as many people here don’t attend church as do, and one in every 5 people of voting age have no faith, it’s surely appropriate to expect that our elected representatives should keep their personal views about religion out of the public domain.

That’s not to say that politicians or civil servants or senior policemen should not have views – or even moral dimensions – based on religious faith.  However, it is to say that they should not voice those views in a professional context.  They have a contractual responsibility – in representing all of society – to base their decisions on rationality and NOT doctrine or religious definitions of morality. 

Religion is a personal matter.  As Richard Dawkins said at last year’s Conservative Party conference, religion should be like stamp collecting or knitting – best done at home.