730 days is extraordinary amount of time for a nation to be without leadership, to be left adrift.
Northern Ireland often feels like a Westminster afterthought, the puzzle that Prime Ministers have never truly been able to understand. The phrase of the 90s, the “impossible problem” comes to mind; like a question you can’t even begin to tease the answer from on a GCSE maths paper, you leave it to the end. You fool yourself, and everyone else, by saying that you’ll return to it for the sake of the extra marks, before inevitably running out of time or simply giving up. But the wellbeing of the nation that is home to nearly 2 million people is not about scoring bonus points. In a political climate where the Tory to-do list is eternal and morality seems to have checked out, where does a Northern Irish girl turn in search of hope for the future of her home?
Michelle O’Neill is not the answer I would have thought of when Stormont government was suspended two years ago. And yet here we are.
Last Saturday (3 February), O’Neill became the first republican First Minister in our 103-year history. My first feelings were of unease (my usual response to change), followed by many questions. O’Neill has promised to be “a first minister for all”, but what does this mean exactly? Who wants what in this nation these days? There was a time when opinion would have swirled around the nationalist/unionist divide among the populace (don’t get me wrong, this never fails to have relevance), but the more pressing matter today is the basic concerns of a forgotten people. I want stability, I want to know that the local assembly will be in session, that nurses and teachers stand a chance of having their pay rises distributed and that progress will be pursued – much like dating men in Edinburgh, the bar is on the floor.
O’Neill’s role stans to be as complex as the history of our nation, as she seeks to unite the six counties. The challenge of maintaining the power-sharing partnership between Sinn Féin and the DUP feels monumental after the latest 730-day stalemate; greater still is the task of making Northern Irish residents feel heard and secure. My resounding feelings are not those of hope or cynicism, but desperation not to see Ms O’Neill fall into the doomed pattern of British/Irish/Northern Irish identity politics that displaces the basic needs of the “all” she stands for.
“Belfast: Northern Ireland Parliament Building” by Larry Myhre is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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O’Neill faces storm as Stormont sits again
730 days is extraordinary amount of time for a nation to be without leadership, to be left adrift.
Northern Ireland often feels like a Westminster afterthought, the puzzle that Prime Ministers have never truly been able to understand. The phrase of the 90s, the “impossible problem” comes to mind; like a question you can’t even begin to tease the answer from on a GCSE maths paper, you leave it to the end. You fool yourself, and everyone else, by saying that you’ll return to it for the sake of the extra marks, before inevitably running out of time or simply giving up. But the wellbeing of the nation that is home to nearly 2 million people is not about scoring bonus points. In a political climate where the Tory to-do list is eternal and morality seems to have checked out, where does a Northern Irish girl turn in search of hope for the future of her home?
Michelle O’Neill is not the answer I would have thought of when Stormont government was suspended two years ago. And yet here we are.
Last Saturday (3 February), O’Neill became the first republican First Minister in our 103-year history. My first feelings were of unease (my usual response to change), followed by many questions. O’Neill has promised to be “a first minister for all”, but what does this mean exactly? Who wants what in this nation these days? There was a time when opinion would have swirled around the nationalist/unionist divide among the populace (don’t get me wrong, this never fails to have relevance), but the more pressing matter today is the basic concerns of a forgotten people. I want stability, I want to know that the local assembly will be in session, that nurses and teachers stand a chance of having their pay rises distributed and that progress will be pursued – much like dating men in Edinburgh, the bar is on the floor.
O’Neill’s role stans to be as complex as the history of our nation, as she seeks to unite the six counties. The challenge of maintaining the power-sharing partnership between Sinn Féin and the DUP feels monumental after the latest 730-day stalemate; greater still is the task of making Northern Irish residents feel heard and secure. My resounding feelings are not those of hope or cynicism, but desperation not to see Ms O’Neill fall into the doomed pattern of British/Irish/Northern Irish identity politics that displaces the basic needs of the “all” she stands for.
“Belfast: Northern Ireland Parliament Building” by Larry Myhre is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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