Voters fed up with ‘DUP-SF junta’, says SDLP’s Dolores Kelly

SDLP deputy leader Dolores Kelly has predicted that the "DUP-Sinn Féin junta" will cobble a deal together next week to "get them to the May election".

At the opening of the SDLP conference in Armagh last night, Ms Kelly said "people of every persuasion are fed up with the lack of political progress and the lack of normalisation" in Northern Ireland.

Ms Kelly, who is being challenged for the deputy leadership by South Belfast Assembly member Fearghal McKinney, said that despite peace there had been little progress towards reconciliation.

Leadership contest

The result of that election will be known at teatime this evening, as will the result of the leadership contest between incumbent Alasdair McDonnell and

Foyle Assembly

member

Colum Eastwood

.

Upper Bann MLA Ms Kelly did not say who she would support for the leadership although she did say Mr Eastwood was a politician she would “like on my team”.

She, however, also praised Dr McDonnell for his “almost gravity-defying performance” in retaining his South Belfast Westminster seat in May in what was “an essentially unionist constituency”.

Ms Kelly referred to some “nasty abuse visited upon” Dr McDonnell during that campaign which, she said, “could only have come from people who, let’s face it, have a track record in destroying people’s lives”. “I have my differences with Alasdair, often much exaggerated, but I pay tribute to how he came through that campaign with dignity and forbearance,” she said.

In terms of the effectiveness of the Northern Assembly and Executive, Ms Kelly said it was "simply shocking when you compare the DUP-SF junta in Stormont with an effective, performing devolved administration in Edinburgh".

She also foresaw a political deal next week which Dublin, London and Washington would herald as "historic".

‘Sticking plaster’

“Do these people have no embarrassment thresholds?” she asked. “It is only yet another sticking plaster to get them to the May election. So let’s not get too excited about it.”

She said the DUP and Sinn Féin were “plain useless” and that she sensed a “new breeze in politics”, in that people desperately wanted change.

“People of every persuasion are fed up with the lack of political progress and the lack of normalisation of our society.

"Despite peace we have made little progress with reconciliation and our communities are in many areas as bitterly divided as ever. The failure to deliver what John Hume called the 'healing process' which should have followed the 1998 political settlement, has been exacerbated in the last two Assembly mandates by the utter failure of the DUP and Sinn Féin to govern fairly or competently.

“They can deliver on virtually nothing and even when they reach agreement the deal unravels later.”

Ms Kelly said the public “hunger for change” presented a massive opportunity for the SDLP.