Feargal Cochrane (University of Kent)

Despite all the shenanigans and psychodramas within the Conservative Party, it might be easy to forget that it is not just politics in Westminster that is in semi-permanent crisis. Devolved government in Northern Ireland has been that way for years. In fact its government has been in an induced coma for four of the last six years and the devolved institutions have been suspended for over 40% of the time since they were first established in 1999. Stormont exists in its own Stranger Things style universe as politics easily flips into a parallel reality, Stormont’s upside down, where monsters lurk, time bends and the plot is full of jump scares.

If Northern Ireland has political demogorgons running around the Stormont estate then the British government must accept the role of Mind Flayer, the large malevolent controlling entity in the Stranger Things Upside Down universe. Admittedly the metaphor breaks down badly here as the British government is far too incompetent and weak to carry off this part convincingly.

In contrast to the relentlessly efficient Mind Flayer, the British government sets deadlines, vacillates, then U-Turns and leaves everyone confused and annoyed about what it is going to do next. So Northern Ireland’s latest Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris decided that the way through the political impasse was to have another Assembly Election if the parties did not restore the devolved institutions. However, even this was cocked up as the UK government could not decide whether, or even when, a new election should take place. So as the hapless Secretary of State called a press conference on the street to fire the starting pistol for an Assembly Election in December, he was hauled back at the last minute by the new Prime Minister who did not want him to announce an actual date. The result of this debacle was that Heaton-Harris looked out of his depth, the media greeted his announcement with derision and the uncertainty about the future of Stormont intensified.

In reality a second Assembly Election in 2022, within six months of the last one in May, would cost the taxpayer over £6 million in the middle of the worst cost of living crisis in living memory, for an outcome that would leave politics more or less back where it started.

Sinn Fein claimed that Northern Ireland was the ‘collateral damage’ of the internal chaos within the Conservative Party, which was only adding to the political instability and economic challenges facing people in Northern Ireland. The DUP is refusing to restore the Executive until action is taken by the British government and the European Union to replace the Northern Ireland Protocol aspect of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement.

The DUP is likely to do reasonably well in a fresh election and will certainly be returned as the largest unionist party. The key issue will be whether it is returned as the largest party overall and qualify for the First Minister position. It is not unreasonable to believe that it could, if the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) gets badly squeezed (as is likely) and some voters who migrated to the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) return (also likely). However, any DUP gains are liable to be offset by a rise in the Sinn Fein vote. There are few nationalists who believe that the Protocol is a barrier to the DUP restoring the devolved institutions. Their suspicion is that the DUP just cannot abide sharing power with nationalists and are using the Protocol as a fig leaf to hide their lack of commitment to the outcome of the democratic process.  Any election is likely to see a squeeze of the SDLP vote as their core supporters may give first preference votes and transfers to Sinn Fein to ensure the DUP cannot wangle its way back into the First Minister role.

The British government has lit a political fuse but nobody yet knows how long it is and whether the election will take place in December, or in January or shortly thereafter. This has contributed to a febrile atmosphere, in part because people are aware that devolution itself, as currently formatted, might be coming to an end.

As the Assembly and Executive remain in suspended animation there have been calls for the British and Irish governments to take a joint approach towards Northern Ireland with a move to a new joint-authority arrangement. While the Northern Ireland Office has ruled this out, the Irish government claimed that a return to the old version of direct rule from Westminster was not an option. Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin (under electoral pressure in the Irish Republic from Sinn Fein), declared that his government ‘will fully pursue its consultative role under the Good Friday Agreement’, if there was a sustained period where Northern Ireland’s institutions failed to function.

The spectre of Joint Authority has spooked loyalist paramilitary factions and their shadowy frontmen.  The Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) sent a letter to political parties in Northern Ireland last week warning of ‘dire consequences’ if any form of joint authority was implemented in the event that devolution was not restored. Cue the eerie music to Stranger Things or any other horror film of your choice as each sinister press release heightens fears in Northern Ireland about what might come next.

While people in Northern Ireland have become used to political emergencies and institutional failure, peace remains fragile and the progress achieved since 1998 can easily be reversed. The peace process itself is as much an idea in people’s heads about sharing and coexistence as it is a political or legal text. In 2016 Brexit reopened the rift that the Good Friday Agreement had closed a generation before, and since then we have seen all sorts of menacing entities seeping through it, poisoning the political atmosphere. Northern Ireland’s own Stranger Things Rift needs to be closed before the main actors call another Assembly Election if any realistic progress is to be made in the devolved institutions.

Any half decent horror show finishes with a good cut scene and (spoiler alert) while the peace process is ultimately in people’s heads, Vecna the humanoid monster in the real Stranger Things series was able to reach into the human world and kill people by feeding off their mental trauma while they were in a comatose state.

It’s time for people to wake up in Northern Ireland if they want to save themselves from their own version of the Upside Down, where Demogorgons, the Mind Flayer and Vecna await.

Feargal Cochrane is Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow in the Conflict Analysis Research Centre at the University of Kent. His last book, Northern Ireland: The Fragile Peace was published by Yale University Press in 2021. His forthcoming book Belfast: The History of a City and Its People will be published in August 2023, also with Yale.