Although only five years ago, New Decade New Approach (NDNA) in many ways appears from a different era.
The Irish and British governments were represented respectively by Simon Coveney and Julian Smith, who have both since retreated from frontline politics, while the DUP – at the time Stormont’s largest party – was led by Arlene Foster.
A number of the protagonists who formed the Executive in the aftermath of the late night deal at Stormont in early January 2020 are still with us – Michelle O’Neill, having since dropped the ‘deputy’ from her official title, remains very much to the fore in regional politics, as does her party colleague Conor Murphy, for the meantime at least, along with Alliance leader and Justice Minister Naomi Long.
However, there are many notable differences – there have also been numerous changes at the top of three of Stormont’s five main parties since; Fine Gael is no longer the Republic’s most popular party; the Tories have been banished from Downing Street after 14 years; and the turmoil precipitated by Brexit has mostly abated.
The process that concluded with NDNA was the latest in a series of ‘hothouse’ negotiations overseen by the two governments that periodically sought to resolve major stumbling blocks.
The Fresh Start agreement, the fruits of a previous process, was signed in November 2015 and within weeks Peter Robinson handed the DUP leadership mantle to Arlene Foster.
In the assembly election the following May, the DUP remained by far the largest party with 38 seats, ten ahead of Sinn Féin. However, for the first time Stormont had an official opposition, led by the Ulster Unionists, under Mike Nesbitt, alongside the SDLP, with Alliance too outside a reduced-size executive.
In July of 2016, the audit office published a report into a little-known scheme called the Renewable Heat Incentive. It would be six months before the slow-burning scandal would fully ignite and precipitate the collapse of devolution.
In the meantime, First Minister Arlene Foster and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness penned a platform piece for The Irish News in which they accused the fledgling opposition of choosing to “duck the challenges and retreat”.
The main area Stormont’s ‘big two’ planned to advance together was in health service reform, through a 10-year vision that would “finally tackle the underlying causes of the problems”.
The platform concluded: “This is what delivery looks like – No gimmicks. No grandstanding. Just ministers getting on with their work.”
Yet within weeks, an ailing Martin McGuinness was pulling down the institutions, citing DUP bad faith and a failure to reciprocate Sinn Féin’s outreach. Ostensibly, the decision to walk away from the institutions was the whiff of corruption around RHI but it appeared the decade-long power-sharing experiment had run its course.
For the following three years in which Stormont remained dormant, newly-appointed northern leader Michelle O’Neill would repeatedly demand “equality, respect and integrity” before the institutions could be restored.
It was a long road back to devolution, a period during which the public inquiry into the RHI scandal exposed a dysfunctional administration, averse to accountability, while promoting a culture of secrecy.
During the arduous effort to put Humpty back together again, agreement on Irish language legislation became a Sinn Féin precondition to restoration, with pressure on the British government to fulfil a pledge made at St Andrews more than a decade previous.
Hopes of a relatively early breakthrough on Valentine’s Day 2018 were scuppered by Arlene Foster, who seemingly had failed to prepare her rank and file for a deal on an Irish language act.
We’d have to wait a further two years, and see Julian Smith replace the hapless Karen Bradley, before agreement could finally be brokered.
The catalyst for a deal was the outcome of the snap general election of December 2019 which saw both the DUP and Sinn Féin take a hit at the polls. Against a background of lengthening waiting lists, widespread industrial action and crumbling infrastructure, the two previously resolute parties suddenly showed an uncharacteristic willingness to compromise.
The new decade had barely begun when the deal was signed.
NDNA was a wishlist that sought to undo all the wrongs of the previous administrations, where carve-up and a lack of candour were the key characteristics. The signatories promised (another) fresh start and a change in the culture which served political interests ahead of the population’s.
Good governance, transparency and accountability were to be the watch words of the restored administration, with pledges to combat climate change, rationalise healthcare, build a shared society, cut quangos and tackle educational under-achievement. The deal also included a section on improving public trust in the political institutions in the wake of RHI.
Roughly two months later we had lockdown and within two years of that the DUP was boycotting the institutions over the Irish Sea border.
The personnel may have changed and Sinn Féin is now Stormont’s largest party but we’ve saw nothing approaching the transformation in our political culture and institutions that was aspired to in the January 2020 deal.
NDNA was less a reboot and more cobbled together cover that enabled the two largest parties to get back into government and simply revert to type.
Last year’s Covid Inquiry exposed how the same dysfunctional traits and silo mentality prevailed in the executive, while an audit office report earlier this year highlighted how little had changed in terms of transparency. Meanwhile, there seems to be little appetite within Sinn Féin and the DUP for reform, as electorally the status quo has served them well to date.
Halfway through the decade, the approach is the same as it ever was.
