When Delivery Fails:
Posted by Jim on July 1, 2025
Northern Ireland’s Dysfunction in a World of Democratic Drift…
 By Eugene Reid on 1 July 2025Matthew Syed’s writes in The Sunday Times this week and it got me thinking. He argues that the problem facing many Western democracies isn’t that politicians have stopped delivering—it’s that voters have stopped wanting reality. We demand high-quality public services but revolt at the suggestion of paying for them. We rage against deficits, but punish anyone who dares to propose a cut. In this environment, leaders survive not by solving problems, but by dressing them up in ever shinier illusions.It’s a sharp, insightful piece. And yet, reading it from Northern Ireland, I find myself asking: is that all we’re dealing with here?Because while Britain, France and the US are undoubtedly struggling under the weight of short-termism, contradiction, and electoral fantasy, Northern Ireland faces an additional—and arguably more dangerous—challenge: a political system that doesn’t function at all.It’s become fashionable to describe Stormont as dysfunctional. But that word is starting to lose its impact. The truth is starker. Dysfunction implies a system that works badly. Ours often, nay, let’s admit it, doesn’t work at all.While Westminster engages in unconvincing fiscal gymnastics and the Élysée fends off protest, Stormont is more likely to be suspended, or just “going through the motions” Civil servants—unelected, unaccountable—are left holding the reins, during the suspensions and when the institutions are up and running, the system does not function as a proper government in any way, shape or form!Budgets go unsigned. Major infrastructure projects stall, or run over budget, time and more often than not. are unfit for purpose! (Think RVH Maternity Hospital)Reform plans gather dust. The public grows more disillusioned by the day. And no manifesto pledge, no matter how fanciful, can be delivered by an Assembly that is hamstrung by the structures that were developed to ensure its very existence!Syed argues that modern voters want to be told comforting lies. He’s not wrong. But here in Northern Ireland, the crisis is more existential. When voters go to the polls, they increasingly suspect that no matter who they elect, nothing will change. That the institutions designed to serve them will be paralysed by veto, collapsed by walkout, or sunk by competing mandates before any programme for government even gets off the ground.Just this week, a friend said to me—with admirable honesty—that “we don’t do real politics here.” He explained that he would continue voting for Sinn Féin until we achieved a united Ireland, and only then, he said, would we start debating education, health, and the economy “like normal countries do.”I understood the strength of his conviction—but I was staggered by the logic. Because a united Ireland, even for those who believe in and strive for it, including yours truly, is years—likely decades—away. Oh, and by the way, it will become reality via a slow, gradual process, not with a “big bang” moment, as many seem to think!Can we really afford to wait that long to fix a health service on the verge of collapse? To rescue an education system buckling under budget pressures? To rebuild public infrastructure, address housing shortages, or tackle chronic underinvestment, and endemic public sector mismanagement!!The idea that politics can pause while we await constitutional resolution is, frankly, intolerable. The damage being done to public services right now is real, urgent, and accelerating. We cannot keep asking citizens to live in a holding pattern while our political system remains stuck in neutral.So yes, the failure of delivery is now a feature of modern democracies. But in Northern Ireland, it’s more than that. It’s a feature of our constitutionally constructed gridlock. Our politics isn’t just infected by populism or paralysed by complexity—it is shackled by a design that too often prioritises equilibrium over progress.We are not immune to the global wave of political illusionism. But we’ve added a local twist: an apparatus incapable of managing disagreement, incapable of adapting, and incapable—too often—of governing at all.We need to be honest. Voters everywhere must accept that hard choices are coming, and that grown-up government requires compromise. But in Northern Ireland, that conversation can only begin once we restore a system capable of having it.Otherwise, we risk not just poor delivery—but democratic decay of a deeper kind |