Tom's Midnight Opposition
In the last blog I implied that Danny Kennedy had dodged a bullet by using Joanne Stuart as cover for a future tuition fees hike. So I should confess to being a bullet dodger myself. When I booked a few days off to cover the kids' half term, I didn't realise I had neatly avoided two of the Assembly's longest sitting days. Now I just have to persuade my sleep deprived colleagues this was honestly the case.
On a half term day trip, the children whiled away the time in the car listening to an audio book of the story of a boy called Tom who steals down the stairs from his bedroom in the middle of the night to turn back time with the help of a magical grandfather clock. He spends a lot of the book wishing his brother Peter would join him, but apart from a late ghostly apparition, Peter never does.
Now, on my first day back in the office, I'm reading through Tom Elliott's speech to a business breakfast in which he seeks to change the hands on the Stormont clock (forwards or backwards is a matter of opinion). Whether you agree with the UUP leader or not, it's actually
Tom Elliott's thesis is that Stormont needs an opposition - but not just yet. He thinks a new system should come into place from 2015, not 2011. That's prompted the TUV to accuse him of dithering, rather than pressing for immediate change. By contrast the SDLP argues the system isn't the problem, it's the failure of the DUP and Sinn Fein to abide by the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement.
Although the UUP leader talks about the need for "genuine power sharing rather than a self-serving carve-up" he doesn't specify how he believes a government should be formed in 2015. A straight majority? A weighted cross community majority?
Mr Elliott's vision of a new model (which includes cutting the number of MLAs and departments ) is pitched for four years' time. But he also proposes one immediate change. This is that the Stormont parties should agree a Programme for Government before appointing departmental ministers. "That way" he argues "all the parties agree what needs to be done first. We begin by sorting out the likes of education, RPA and the Maze/Long Kesh before we start wasting money disagreeing."
According to the Northern Ireland Act, the parties currently have 7 days to appoint both the First and Deputy First Ministers and the departmental ministers. So under the UUP vision, a government programme would have to be agreed in a week. That's a tall order, but as Mr Elliott points out, the Conservatives and Liberal Democats reached their deal in 5 days. (P.S. An Ulster Unionist reader has pointed out that the 7 days is from the first sitting of the Assembly - if you start the clock from when the election results are counted you would a few days more.)
This of course begs a question. What if all the parties cannot agree a Programme for Government within the UUP's proposed timetable? Would the UUP decline to take any department to which it may be entitled. Mr Elliott says "the Ulster Unionists are NOT preparing our members for Opposition in 2011". But if they take a department without an agreed Programme for Government in place they will be contravening the first stage in their leader's new vision for change.
I haven't mentioned the possibility of Sinn Fein being the biggest party, because that remains hypothetical (if not quite as hypothetical as Mr Elliott's vision of a different Stormont system.) But of course the outcome of the May election will have a significant impact not just on how much of a toehold the UUP retains within the Executive, but also on how urgent this debate about Stormont's "ugly scaffolding" becomes.
I'm 
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