Downey's Election Diary 2: Making a little influence go a long way

Eight years ago, I worked as an election pundit in the South for TV3 along with one of the most astute political minds I’ve ever met, Brendan O’Carroll. His mother, who inspired the comedian’s Agnes Brown character, had actually been a Labour TD, having started life as a nun. (Her plain speaking was, no doubt, a lot more suited to the Dáil.)

O’Carroll himself was a mine of political meta- and micro-data, he was fiercely intelligent, rarely without a cryptic crossword at his elbow, and he could work a room better than the first President Clinton.

Two things in particular I remember about this experience. First is the importance of the ‘half-a-Mercs’.

This term dates back to the time when junior ministers were allowed to share the use of a ministerial Mercedes, if they were appearing at events in their constituency.

It was to remind the voters that they, and their man, had influence at the top table. And every government, no matter which party was at the helm, sweated buckets to ensure that they got their half-a-Merc appointments exactly right.

It had nothing to do with merit; it was all about location. These cars had to be seen going into Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Dundalk on a regular, if not daily, basis.

The Northwest currently has both Martin McGuinness and Mark H Durkan (or Mark Junior as he is known colloquially, and incorrectly) at the top table at Stormont – serving as ‘full Mercs’.

But, importantly, the Sinn Fein man does not represent the Foyle constituency, while the SDLP man’s influence, as the only member of his party at the table, is limited.

As such, there is a real gap in any direct lobbying on behalf of this region at Executive level. And the new, much-trumpeted Northwest Sub-Group will realistically need its own nine-figure budget, if it’s to be taken seriously and not go the way of the One Plan.

So far, it’s spending its days making silk purses out of sows’ ears, basking in the glory of an already-agreed £10m teaching block at Magee – with no extra students. Small beer indeed, when compared to the £250m investment in a new, unsolicited university in North Belfast – or the £110m ransacked from the stalled Derry-Dublin road upgrade, to build the DUP a new motorway in Ballymena.

Our friends east of the Bann know exactly how to use their half-a-Mercs, and then some.

At Westminster, similarly, the Northwest’s influence, in both numerical and political terms, is very low. The SDLP are a minor opposition party, with just three MPs (from 650), and could feasibly lose their South Belfast seat in a fortnight’s time.

According to last week’s insightful Newsnight debate, the SDLP are once again committing themselves to backing a Labour government, which, until all offers are in, is a little like giving the milk away for free.

Sinn Fein, meanwhile, as an abstentionist party, don’t take up their five seats at all, at least at the moment. But, behind the scenes, the Shinners seem to be reconsidering their position.

This is evidenced by the fact that last week three separate candidates - Máirtín Ó Muilleoir, Michelle Gildernew and Mickey Brady – all trotted out a new, ‘Nothing is fixed in stone’ line, when asked why they wouldn’t take their seats in the House of Commons. It’s what’s known in the trade as flip-flopping off the one hymn-sheet.

It pains me to point this out, but the most pragmatic and fiscally responsible approach, in terms of protecting the North’s ever-decreasing allowance from Westminster, is being taken by the DUP. They will wait until the time is exactly right and then auction off their votes to the highest bidder. Labour, Tory, it doesn’t really matter to them – it’s all about the money, pure and simple. It’s Saturday night at the docks, the navy’s about to land, and the DUP are putting on their miniskirts and high heels.

And it might just work. If the DUP land a role as a coalition partner, this approach could, in the short term, stave off cuts to the Stormont budget of a billion pounds a year. At least, that’s according to Ian Paisley Junior, who is not half as stupid as he often lets on. But before you get too excited, just remember that his party will make it their business to ensure that every penny saved will be ploughed right back into their Antrim heartlands.

Moreover, if we’re to believe the Belfast Telegraph, as a sweetener, loyalists will also get the right to march wherever and whenever they damn well please.

In such an eventuality, you could perhaps see the SDLP and Sinn Fein being forced to band together at Westminster. The nationalists’ combined eight seats could counterbalance the DUP’s eight or nine, and dampen their excesses. But we’re getting a bit of ourselves, and that’s very much a worst case, wasted-energy, reactionary-type scenario.

Which brings me back to the second most important thing I learned about politics in the South – sometimes, if you want to get the best for your people, you have deal with some thoroughly rotten people.

The Independent TD Tony Gregory is a case in point. In 1982, in his first week in the Dáil, he brokered an agreement with the loathsome Charles Haughey, whereby the new TD agreed to support a minority Fianna Fail government, in return for a massive cash injection into his constituency. The ‘Gregory Deal’, as it became known, included jobs, housing and industrial development for inner city Dublin – and was valued at around £100 million. Interestingly, Fine Gael’s Garrett Fitzgerald also approached Gregory with a similar partnership but offered him less than £1m.

If the SDLP and Shinners are serious about bringing their narrow influence to bear in the House of Commons, they need to think strategically about what they can get from London and what they’re prepared to do, proactively, to get it.

According to the BBC’s latest polling, neither the Labour or Tory parties will get within an ass’s roar of a majority. Either party, if it wants to lead, is going to need 40 to 50 votes from minority partners to guarantee a stable government. A block of eight, i.e. SF and SDLP together, could wield significant bargaining power in this situation, as the DUP have already worked out.

Just imagine, though, what could happen if all 18 of the North’s MPs formed together as a united block, with the one and only goal of protecting our local budget. Jesus, the Treasury might even be forced to increase it.

Cynical? Yes, and certainly mercenary. But, if you’ve got nothing else to offer, this sort of politics is essential. And if you want to serve your people properly, as Tony Gregory us showed thirty years ago, sometimes you gotta bring a long spoon. Debates, real and imagined

Two other quick sidebars about events over the last week.

The first is a hat tip to South Belfast candidate Máirtín Ó Muilleoir for his shameless, repeated plugging of his native city on last week’s Newsnight debate. I lost count of the number of times the one-man PR machine reminded British viewers what a wonderful place Belfast is. Indeed he’s so convincing, if you’d never visited the place, you’d almost believe him.

The second sidebar is more of a query: why on earth are the parties here scared of standing up to Ulster University? How could the institution possibly treat them any worse?

The manner in which UU scrapped an election debate at Magee last week, allegedly because organisers couldn’t guarantee all parties would turn up, was shoddy, high-handed and anti-democratic in the extreme.

Bad enough we can’t get onto the big stage for the BBC debates, now we can’t even book a hall in our own hometown?

Do our public representatives really believe that if they speak out against UU’s repeated failures in this city that it will damage the already negligible prospects of us getting a new campus in the next five years?

UU is a fine master indeed that it can so easily convince a starving dog not to bite.