North’s main political leaders trade mild blows and insults

Naomi Long of the Alliance Party compared her Ulster Unionist counterpart, Mike Nesbitt, to a bed-hopping political "Lothario" during Thursday night's UTV Northern Ireland leaders' debate.

However, while the leaders of the North’s five main parties offered a number of shades of Orange and Green – plus the yellow/orange of the centrist Alliance – their performances at the UTV studios did not reach the heights of steamy political passion.

Nonetheless, it was a reasonably stimulating affair, as Ms Long, Mr Nesbitt, Arlene Foster (DUP), Michelle O'Neill (Sinn Féin) and Colum Eastwood (SDLP) thrashed around issues such as the "cash for ash" debacle, Gerry Adams as bogeyman and Brexit, as well as the SDLP and UUP transferring votes to each other.

The five leaders will have been relieved to emerge intact from the experience.

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On the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme, there was a sense of Ms Foster versus the rest, although there was some attempt to gang up on Ms O'Neill as well – arguing that, because the DUP and Sinn Féin were a double act in the Stormont Executive, they should share culpability.

But the major portion of blame for the RHI fiasco was laid at the door of the DUP. Without future cost controls, this could leave Northern taxpayers facing an unnecessary bill of £490 million (€577 million) up to 2036.

Eco-heating scandal

Mr Nesbitt said the Northern Assembly election on March 2nd should be a "referendum on RHI". Ms O'Neill, in her first big TV electoral test as Sinn Féin's Northern leader, said the flawed eco-heating "scandal was signed, sealed and delivered by the DUP".

If Ms O’Neill lacked the confidence of her predecessor, Martin McGuinness, neither did she make any big errors that could be used against the party during the campaign.

Mr Eastwood, again on the RHI theme, said the reason the North was facing an election was because of “the arrogance of Arlene Foster” and her lack of “humility” in refusing to temporarily step aside pending an investigation into the scheme.

Ms Foster's riposte was that RHI was the "excuse but not the reason" that Sinn Féin used to walk away from Stormont and trigger the election. "It is all about Gerry Adams's republican agenda because he did not get his way," she said. "So he pulled the institutions down and that is dreadful. It is dreadful for the people of Northern Ireland who want stability."

Casting the Sinn Féin president as a Machiavellian manipulator, she warned that Mr Nesbitt’s willingness to transfer votes across the divide was “very, very dangerous” and could weaken unionism and lead to a Border poll on a united Ireland.

Mr Nesbitt and Ms Long accused her of using the “politics of fear”. Regardless, the DUP leader insisted the election was a choice between “Gerry Adams’s Sinn Féin and your DUP”. If unionists did not vote for her party, she warned, they might get Sinn Féin as the largest party and entitled to the post of First Minister.

Protracted period

Mr Eastwood countered that if voters went for the DUP and Sinn Féin, all they would get would be “a protracted period of negotiations”. But if they supported the SDLP and the UUP, they would get an immediate return of the Executive and Assembly.

Mr Nesbitt said the public “don’t want more of the same” – they want to “get back to the principles of ’98, of tolerance, trust and respect”.

Ms Long, who like the SDLP and the UUP is chasing the centre vote, welcomed Mr Nesbitt’s call for cross-community polling, but with jaundiced qualification. “The UUP has become like the Lothario of Northern Ireland politics,” she said. “It has hopped in and out of bed with almost every other political party.

“It is good that they are standing on their two feet,” Ms Long added. “It is good that Mike is arguing that people should vote on the basis of the substance of how we do government, not along the kind of tribal lines we previously had. It is a shame he hasn’t been able to carry his party with him.”