A Police Dividend?
Discussing the reasons for the current gridlock at a seminar yesterday, I confessed that I cannot quite see the logic of the DUP's "community confidence" argument. If they were asking unionists to accept Gerry Kelly as Justice Minister, then the need for lots of time to elapse might be completely understandable. But the party has already negotiated with Sinn Fein a method of choosing the minister which will allow them to veto any republican. Will David Ford or Naomi Long be different people in, say, 6 months time?
Of course some DUP sceptics might not have taken this completely on board, or may be so disenchanted with the current arrangements that the veto means nothing to them.
However presuming this is a small minority, why would the DUP want more time?
One explanation is that they don't want to be seen to back down under Sinn Fein pressure. According to this interpretation republican tactics are forestalling the agreement on a timetable they profess to seek.
Then there's the small matter of getting an Alliance politician (or some other compromise candidate) to play ball with the system of appointment.
There is the fine detail of the departmental structures (Jim Allister has made great play of the DFM getting oversight of judges and the DUP would have to iron this out if they are to insulate themselves from further TUV criticism).
But I think the biggest pending question might be finance. Policing here costs around £900 million a year. I haven't a ballpark figure for the courts and the prisons, but clearly they would take the overall bill up to something between £1 billion and £2 billion. Taking on these kind of outgoings without firm guarantees of the funding would be foolish, no matter where you stand on the green orange spectrum.
The government has already legislated for the possibility of a "policing precept" here whereby money could be raised locally for the PSNI (the precept already exists in the English regions). But the Stormont politicians won't be in any hurry to follow water charges with a police charge.
So as an MP put it to me, Westminster will have to come up with a wad of cash. Or as Yogi Berra would put it, "it's deja vu, all over again" (and for those of you getting deja vu, that's not the first time I've reached for that quote).
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