Ad nauseam I have heard reports over the last few days about how voters really wanted to talk about ‘the bread and butter issues’ instead of the usual crap. Well, if this is true, it sure as hell made not a blind bit of difference to their voting habits.

His acid comment was that UUP handed their majority over and once all the hard work was done the DUP scooped the honors. Similarly now that the chalice has been passed the DUP have to deal with it and can no longer put off entering into a power sharing agreement. What Paisley is doing of course is cutting the best deal possible. The recent mention of the conversations between Blair and Paisley going far beyond politics illustrates not Blair religiosity, but his ability to butter the anti-papist up and make the transition easier.

Hugh, you’re right of course, about the loss of the middle ground, but all mention of Northern Ireland now is about economics. Bertie in New York was talking how the talk is all about the price of houses rather than sectarianism. But then you’d expect him to say that as it his solution to everything, thinking that a property bubble is the sign of a healthy society. Jeremy Paxman was walking the streets of Belfast with a SF councillor recently. With his usual nonchalance he nodded back to a group of red bricked terraced houses and said ‘you couldn’t give those away a few years ago, now you’d be lucky to get one’. The councilor chuckled and looked as if Paxman had inadvertantly happened upon his favourite topic of conversation.

But its interesting what you say, if I get you right that these ’sectarian blocs’ (a much more 20th century term)would become crisscross through the different areas. Living together but forever separate.

I’ve always thought that the polarization was a consequence of each faction ensuring they get a big enough piece of the pie once the resolution of the conflict allowed for economic expansion.

The DUP and Sinn Fein have had this symbiotic relationship in recent years, where unionist voters think the DUP is the only response to Sinn Fein’s advance, and vice versa with nationalist voters, and the only middle ground really worth having -the one between unionists and nationalists- has crumbled.

So you might have Sinn Fein in constitutional politics, and they might be sharing power with the DUP, but in practical terms you have Northern Ireland split into a series of fiefdoms, with identity politics set to rule in perpetua.

To give you an idea: my parents live in a reasonably nice part of town, traditionally nationalist, but our next door neighbour is Protestant, and I’m sure there’s a few more Protestants living in the street. In the recent elections, however there was no canvassing there from unionist party candidates.

Now in campaigning terms this might make sense for the canvassers, but it illustrates that what you have in Northern Ireland is not two competing visions of a better life, where unionists actually want to live alongside nationalists and vice versa, and try to convince them of such, but rather just two nationalisms, where demagoguery trumps almost everything else.

I was at a conference in 2003 and was amazed to talk to a serious thoughtful guy from Belfast who was telling me that a new middle ground would emerge between UUP people like Donaldson and DUP realists. I didn’t believe him at the time, but now…

Indeed Mandelson seems to attract a sort of hatred from the traditional Left in British politics, those who are not best pleased by the New Labour project and the Torification of the Labour Party. They seem to blame Peter for the corruption of Labour, deciding that he was the architect of spin and focus group politics. There’s no doubt that his ‘brand’ politics was an influence, but it kind of lets Blair off the hook. As Hugh says he has a prim patrician air, which goes against the grain of the down-to-earth image that many traditional Labour supporters imagine for themselves. But this means the negative reaction is based on his publicly perceived images as opposed to what he is actually responsible for.

But there was a time when Mandelson was considered to be the power behind the throne, especially around the time when he was a Minister with a Portfolio. Around the time someone on Newsnight suggested that a Labour minister was gay and the implication was that it was him. All mention of the suggestion in further news reports were banned by Downing Street. It became absurd when the topic came up on Have I Got News for You – it was referred to as the ‘topic which we cannot mention’.

Now the attitude towards him is ‘oh how the great have fallen (twice)’.

Hugh, very good point. In my rush of writing I gave the impression that I preferred one man’s approach over the other, whereas its more accurate to say I dislike them both equally. While my opinion of Mandelson is very much based on impressions of his time in office (as opposed to actual facts) I’ll concede that he may have been more concerned about what effect the outcome of such a tactic (secret letters etc) would have on the people of Northern Ireland and that Blair was preoccupied with a Clintonian style legacy event. In this case and is in many other its as if he’s trying to appeal to the as yet unfilled pages of a history book rather than real people.

Blair is indeed an amoral moron and his motivation for negotiating with the ‘Army’ council was based the prospect of devolution that had come about from the Good Friday Agreement, an event which was initially driven forward not by British politicians but by Hume and Adams. So he was being presented with an opportunity and yes, looking at it from your point of view, it seems that Mandelson’s view was more considered.

Thinking about it today I did some ‘what if’ style speculating. So, what if Blair had followed Mandelson’s advice and not offered concessions in 1999. It’s difficult to know exactly as there were probably many other factors involved but considering that Republicans were moving towards power sharing anyway, offering them less might have strengthened David Trimble’s and the UUP’s hand. Now I am probably out of my depth already but is it possible that the slipping away of support from the UUP was because that under their watch it seems as if too much was being given too quickly, reinforcing the position of the DUP, the vanguards of intransigence. Just a thought.