“JON Burrows,” remarked RTÉ political correspondent Vincent Kearney on the former Trevor’s elevation to UUP leader in January, “believes he will bring a fresh approach that will appeal to those who have turned away from his party and politics in general”.
I’m going to be honest and say that I haven’t seen much in the way of a fresh approach in the blink of an eye that Jon’s been in politics. Certainly his early emphasis on the welfare of comfort dogs and ornamental fish in prison was a novel if oddly niche way of doing politics, but it was odd, not fresh. And anyway, the political cohort that votes on the basis of how cocker spaniels and koi carp are cared for behind bars is, I imagine, a determinedly limited one.
In relation to the more traditional political battlegrounds the UUP boss has done and said nothing to suggest that his “fresh approach” claim was anything other than boilerplate new-guy rhetoric. On the contrary, when presented with a museum-quality, ocean-going, 24-carat chance to do something different he chose to do exactly what unionist leaders have always done: the expected. What’s more, the opportunity he was handed to do something new came with little to no prospect of political blowback.
The issue of the age of criminal responsibility (ACR) for children (10 here at present) is not one that drives the foot soldiers of unionism to the East Belfast barricades. No Gliders will be torched if it’s decided that an 11-year-old should not be treated as an adult when he turns up at Laganside. No people will be burned out of their homes if the law decrees that a primary school-age child’s mens rea is less developed than a 40-year-old’s. Yet for some reason that’s still not clear to me the matter has turned Orange and Green (and of course in Loyal Ulster Alliance is always of the latter hue).
Both sides of the debate are perfectly arguable. Sinn Féin, Alliance and the SDLP argued that the cut-off age for the courts to treat a child as an adult should rise from 10 to 14. Reason: Is anyone going to say with a straight face that a primary school-age child of 11 really belongs between two burly prison officers? The DUP argued that younger children are perfectly capable of possessing the required criminal intent. Reason: The Bulger case.
So oddly determined were the DUP to fight and even die on this hill that they tabled a petition of concern in an effort to scupper the change, even in the knowledge that they and the TUV didn’t have the numbers to make it work. To obtain the required 30 signatures they would need the backing of some MLAs from the UUP, which pretty much meant that they would need the backing of Jon Burrows. That backing was by no means guaranteed. The UUP was engaged in a round of chaotic in-fighting, and hadn’t its leader swept into power on that promise of a fresh approach to politics? And isn’t the petition of concern a notoriously rancid approach to politics? Isn’t the petition of concern, in fact, out on its own as the No.1 case study in Stormont dysfunction?
This was a penalty kick for Jon, wasn’t it?
“No thanks, guys. I won’t be signing your petition of concern because it’s a horribly abused mechanism that sums up all that’s wrong with politics here.”
And hey, presto! In one sentence the new UUP leader would have delivered on his new politics promise by refusing to play the oldest game, and refusing on an issue of such relative public apathy, disinterest and confusion that he would have lost not a single vote in the process.
I’m not going to say that it was the first test that Burrows has failed. His promise to turn his back on culture wars politicking remains stubbornly undelivered (see particularly his various Daily Mail editorial-style interventions on the Trans debate). But it’s the first time – and very possibly the only time – that he’s been offered a strings-free chance to do precisely what he says he wants to do.
What odds that he’ll make a different decision when there’s yer actual political jeopardy involved?
Saying sorry for 50 years of UUP sectarianism, brutality and ineptitude that led to the North catching fire, for instance – now that would be jeopardy. And that would be a fresh approach. It’s a conversation that’s been skirted around for a few decades now, but it’s a conversation that needs to be had. And who better to have it than a new UUP leader on a mission to reboot with precisely zero historical, familial or collegial ties to old and disgraced UUP regimes which played a decades-long game of Hold My Beer with apartheid South Africa?
Jon Burrows knows as well as I do that the single most effective thing he could do to make the union appeal to a constitutionally significant cohort of Catholics would be to apologise on behalf of the UUP for the party having treated their parents and grandparents abominably for half a century. He knows better than I do the almost mystical healing power that a landmark apology can bring, because he served in Derry for a long time.
But if Burrows gulped at the prospect of DUP disapproval in the matter of a tawdry technical mechanism at Stormont, what chance of him emerging as a leader who can summon epoch-defining political courage?
Not much is the current betting. Especially since Burrows, already in the red on his new-start credit rating, is about to face his first pre-Twelfth mediafest. Flags, bonfires, marches – where once he was tasked with policing these flashpoints, in the coming weeks he’s tasked for the first time with taking a side on them.
More tests.
More opportunities to do something new.
More opportunities to do something old.
Go on, Jon. Surprise us.
