SDLP leader Claire Hanna has compared former Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government to the Stormont Executive, accusing both of having “no real sense of purpose” and saying it was difficult to understand what either administration was trying to achieve.
Speaking ahead of the SDLP’s party conference this weekend, Hanna delivered a striking assessment of the Westminster government, where her party has historically maintained close links with Labour while fiercely guarding its political independence.
While she described the arrival of Andy Burnham as Prime Minister as “refreshing”, she was careful to stress that the SDLP would not simply fall into line behind the new Labour administration.
“We have been all of our lives, and so are the Labour Party, a member of the Party of European Socialists. So we’re a sister party in that regard.
“We are very much our own people, our own politicians, and Colm [Eastwood] and I in Westminster, and all of us vote how we see fit, and the benefits for the people that we represent.
“We’ve never taken any other party’s whip, so just to be clear about that. But yeah, we do have, we do have common cause with people on the centre left, around the world.
“Clearly, and we weren’t shy about saying it, we voted against Keir Starmer’s government on many occasions; we, without fear or favour, address the policies.”
Claire Hanna then delivered one of the most pointed assessments of Starmer’s time in office, drawing a direct comparison between Westminster and Stormont.
“That was a disappointing government in terms of how it presented politics and how it got things done, and I actually see a lot of parallels between Starmer’s government and the Executive, there was just no real sense of purpose, you know, it’s hard to understand what they believed, what they were trying to achieve, because it wasn’t coming through in how they communicated and what they actually delivered.
“So look, Andy Burnham has been refreshing. I mean, just this week, we had quite a substantial, I mean, a genuinely substantial announcement on, for example, the approach to the catastrophic situation in Palestine in terms of settler terrorism in the West Bank, but that sort of step change hopefully is the shape of things to come.
“But we’re also very clear that no UK Prime Minister is going to do the things that need to be done here. That’s our job.
“We’re not waiting for him to do the work on a new Ireland, for example, which is why his clumsy remarks about it being off the table, and people kind of lost their minds about it here, as if they expected the Prime Minister from England to come over and tell us that he was gonna break up the union and don’t worry, it was all in hand.”
For Hanna, the question of a future united Ireland is therefore no longer something which can be treated as a distant constitutional possibility.
She believes the political parties and governments on both sides of the border need to begin doing the practical work of preparing for it now, regardless of when or whether a border poll is ultimately held.
Her comments came after Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he intended to raise the issue with the Prime Minister, including the criteria the Secretary of State could use when deciding whether a border poll should be held.
“I think the fact that Micheál Martin has said that is a really clear indication of the energy of this conversation and the trajectory, and we have worked very intensively with his party, with government parties, and opposition parties to just deepen their understanding that a new Ireland can’t just be a rhetorical thing.
“It has to be planned for and stepped through. So I think that was a very significant change in position from the Taoiseach, which hasn’t come out of nowhere, shall we say.
“I think it is appropriate to clarify [the criteria], and we will be doing some work in Westminster in the autumn and after that. I think all of us here in democratic Ireland, more broadly, should be shaping those criteria.
“Again, it’s another if it’s not, let’s hear what London thinks should be the criteria. We would want that to be widely consulted because there will be a panel of indicators.”
Hanna said the SDLP’s argument was not simply that a united Ireland should happen, but that the process leading towards constitutional change needed to be carefully planned and capable of taking account of people who do not currently support it.
She pointed to an SDLP event at the MAC in Belfast earlier this year and the party’s “Success by Design” document as examples of its attempt to move the debate away from slogans and towards detailed policy.
“There are bigger questions around the how, the why, and when. The SDLP will be making this case between now and the next election. Who do you trust to be around those negotiating tables? Who do you trust to protect the interests of not just those who, like us, believe in this right now, but the people who are sceptical, the people who maybe it isn’t their first choice constitutionally?
“Who do you trust to do that work with both governments and get them into the right place, and who do you trust to get into the detail and not just kind of rally the base, and I think for a lot of people that will be the SDLP.
“I think it’s really important to get into the details of the planning. Our event in the MAC in June, which was a pretty significant all-party event, but not just talking about this is what I want, you know, sort of getting into the real texture detail.
“We made sure that every single panel of the five on that day had people who don’t come from a traditional Irish nationalist background or instinct. We want all different views.
“We made it clear, because we had senior UK politicians, politics is changing now, so, you know, there’s no point, even people who don’t want to talk about change here, and there are the parties of the status quo who don’t want to make change, it’s coming, so you can either shape it or, or be a passenger in it.”
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