NI Assembly resignation: Lone wolf or sacrificial lamb?
Partisan politicking risks undermining use of committee as an independent investigative tool
The government that runs Northern Ireland is not exactly a coalition. Sinn Féin and the DUP are not exactly partners, although they share power and sit together in the Northern Ireland Executive. But the unwritten rules of coalition politics do apply, at least to a degree. Not least the rule that says “thou shalt not do down or undermine one’s fellow executive member”, no matter how much one dislikes his politics and how much one may have had to do him down in the course of election campaigns.
Of course, it happens. And when caught out, as Sinn Féin’s Daithi McKay has been for “coaching” a witness to the Assembly committee he chairs, there is a predictable storm of righteous indignation and talk of “bad faith”. And in the interests of a facade of harmony an exercise in damage limitation is undertaken – Sinn Féin insists it had no hand or act in anything untoward, and McKay falls on his sword with copious party assurances, however implausible, that he acted alone, a “lone wolf”.