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Powell Implicates SDLP In Own Demise
Jonathan Powell, advisor to Tony Blair in the Good Friday Agreement era and a man attracting a lot of press on Slugger lately regarding his new book on that time, was on Simon Mayo's show on Radio 5 at lunch time today talking about his book and the events leading up to the Good Friday Agreement. He said something that got me thinking.
That was that the deal Tony Blair had been trying to strike originally was a deal between the 'moderate' and dominant parties in Northern Ireland: the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP. When the SDLP said they couldn't come along without Sinn Fein, Powell claims that it then became a case of ensuring that a deal could be done between the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein.
Follow up:
In my view and, from what I gather that of many others, the excessive pandering to Sinn Fein which followed was undoubtedly a major contributing factor in the subsequent drop in support for the deal and the Ulster Unionists who promoted it. Trimble, his party, the victims of terrorism and the unionist people were effectively being hung out to dry.
So did the SDLP effectively sideline themselves? Was it really necessary to broker a deal between the extremes rather than the more progressive parties? Just how much did the SDLP's insistence on bringing and keeping the Provos on board contribute to the current situation where the assembly is dominated by the 'hard-liners' of the DUP and Sinn Fein, with the more-pragmatic parties sidelined?