If you asked people who runs the north, the answers you’d get would vary but most would be pretty predictable: Stormont, the executive, Sinn Féin and the DUP, even Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly.
All wrong. Let’s have a look at the real governance.
Subscriber exclusive: Q&A with political commentator Alex Kane
The person who runs the north is Dr Julie Harrison. Who’s she? She’s the permanent secretary at the NIO. She’s the person pulling the levers and pressing the buttons behind the facade.
She runs the NIO through a board of directors, 11 deputy directors, and an executive committee.
No, nothing to do with the toytown Stormont executive squabbling about how to spend the money Britain sends here.
The NIO board advises an absentee proconsul sent from Westminster for the time being.
If you look at the personnel on the board and executive committee you’ll not be surprised to notice, shall we say, a distinct lack of an Irish dimension, only a passing knowledge of Ireland, Irish culture or nationalist proclivities.
Ultimately of course a proconsul takes the decisions, but if it wasn’t for Julie Harrison and the NIO board they wouldn’t even know what they were supposed to be taking decisions about.
What sort of thing? For example appointing members and overseeing the workings of the Parades Commission, the Human Rights Commission, the widely unacceptable so-called ‘Independent’ Commission for Reconciliation (ha-ha) and Information Recovery (ICRIR), and many other such bodies that you couldn’t let the Stormont executive near.
Incidentally, the ICRIR has two directors to oversee it: for legacy as a whole and for implementation.
The NIO also appoints numerous other officials like the Crown Solicitor for the north, the Chief Electoral Officer.
How does the proconsul decide who to appoint when he hasn’t a clue who any of the nominees are? The NIO tell him. Acceptable?
The NIO employs 170 in its London office and Belfast office, which was opened a couple of years ago by the contemptible Conservative government pursuing its anti-devolution policy.
The NIO had done without an office in central Belfast for all of existence since 1972, but the Conservatives wanted to override some devolved powers through the UK Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government so they developed an unwelcome, unnecessary presence in Belfast.
To place NIO activities in perspective, the Scottish Office dealing with a population of 5.4 million employs about 90, just over half the NIO number.
Why the difference? Well, for a start the Scottish government is a government, not a glorified county council with delusions of Ruritanian grandeur like Stormont, but look how much the NIO oversees and involves itself in: directors and deputy directors for security, legacy, legacy implementation, prosperity (what?), external relations (??), politics, and more. Besides, there are legions of press officers to bamboozle the public.
Mind you, correlating the number of civil servants with the population is a mug’s game. There are different ways to define them.
It isn’t just the NIO that has a surfeit of officials. Have a look at the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) – 24,400. In Scotland there are under 9,000 directly employed and in Wales 5,500.
Anyway, the bloated NICS isn’t the point here. It’s governance.
Doing cartwheels of joy when Stormont was restored masked the reality that the NIO takes all the decisions that matter.
Legacy is just one example. The return of Stormont meant the return of deadlock, for Sinn Féin can get nothing through the executive let alone the assembly.
The DUP don’t want anything done. They insist on stagnation, for stupidly, they view any reform as a threat.
Eight months from February to a Programme for Government with no targets or timetable; FOI answers blocked and delayed; repeated Audit Office criticism; an assembly sitting two days a week because there’s nothing for them to do, and so on and so on.
In the absence of Stormont the NIO made progress on abortion, delayed by the UUP; on an Irish language Act, blocked by the DUP; on women’s rights; not to mention the Windsor Framework so beloved by Jim Allister and his merry men as their raison d’être.
As 2025 beckons, are people satisfied with this lack of self-determination? Do people want this the sort of governance to continue? Stormont as an artifice to conceal the truth that the north doesn’t work?
The truth is that the NIO takes all the decisions that matter because Sinn Féin and the DUP can’t take any decisions that matter.
What this outcome shows is that fundamentally, devolved administration of this sub-polity is a charade.
The British don’t just send money, they still run the place from behind the facade that’s Stormont.