Alliance role in powersharing Executive ‘should not be taken for granted’

Alliance Party leader Naomi Long has warned that her party’s continued participation in the Stormont powersharing Executive should not be “taken for granted”.

Ms Long said she would have no problem stepping away from the Executive if she believed that it had become too “threadbare” to deliver for people.

The Justice Minister also blasted the “pantomime” politics of the Assembly which she said had become more concerned with “how people dress going into the chamber than how they address each other”.

Ms Long spoke to the Press Association ahead of the Alliance Party conference on Saturday.

The cross-community party currently has two ministers in the Executive, Ms Long and Andrew Muir.

But Ms Long said there were “political tensions” within the four-party coalition.

She said whether to remain part of the Executive or to go into opposition was something that she “continually measured”.

She said: “Being in the Executive for us is a matter of balance and choice, and so we weigh up on every occasion could we deliver more as part of the Executive than we could outside, or are we just going in and propping up something that is so dysfunctional we won’t be able to deliver anything?

“We made a decision in 2022 to go in because we felt that with the two ministers we could deliver more, I think that was the right decision.

“But that’s a balance that we don’t just make after elections.

“That’s a balance that we continually measure, because if we get to the point where we feel that our involvement in the Executive is just propping up something that isn’t capable of delivering, that isn’t allowing us to deliver on our priorities, where we are frustrated to the point where we can’t actually do the jobs we’re there to do, then we don’t need to wait for an election to make that change.

“That’s a consideration that we’re constantly weighing in the balance.

“I would just say that nobody should take for granted our continued engagement with the Executive, either before or after the elections.

“We want to be good partners in government.

“We want to behave constructively, we want to deliver for people of Northern Ireland but, if we’re being blocked from doing those things, if we’re not able to deliver on real change for people, then what would be the purpose of staying there?”

She added: “At the moment we are delivering much more than we could just sitting outside the executive critiquing it.”

“But if I ever felt that the executive was so threadbare that we weren’t able to continue making the change I would have no problem stepping away from that.”

The Alliance leader said she believed global politics was currently in a “negative space”.

She said she believed standards of debate at Stormont had “declined rapidly” in the current Assembly mandate.

Ms Long said: “I think there have been standards that were taken as normal in the past that have fallen by the wayside.

“There’s been more focus, frankly, on how people dress going into the chamber than how they address each other, which should be the substantive issue of concern.

“I’m as robust as the next person. I can give it, I can take it back, but there is a certain standard with which you should have the exchanges.

“And I do think the way some of our colleagues have been spoken to, not just in Alliance, across parties, it’s just not acceptable. It’s not acceptable.”

Ms Long said there had been a “cheapening” of political discourse in the social media age.

She added: “It’s lean-in to the sort of Trump narrative, where you can say anything, you can be abusive, you can be rude, and people will still think that there’s something powerful about that, or dynamic about that.

“I want to live in a society and I want to do politics in an environment where people are respectful, where people come to the debate not just to read a speech or to drop a zinger, but actually to listen to what their opponents think and respond to it and and hear a different perspective that might actually shape their views.

“I can’t imagine anybody would be impressed by watching the Assembly and some of the pantomime antics that go on down there.

“I can’t imagine any member of the public who sees that as hard work or diligent or professional.”

Ms Long said she understood public anger over a recent independent recommendation for a 27% pay rise for Stormont MLAs.

She said: “We were very clear in our submission, MLA pay being raised by 27%, it isn’t sensible, it isn’t sustainable. It isn’t credible.

“Particularly when the Assembly does struggle to deliver and connect with the public, but also it isn’t reflective of what’s happening in the wider public sector, where we have real challenges in terms of our budgets and real challenges in terms of pay.

“We have argued that our pay should be linked to other public sector workers, and I think that that is the way it should be.”