‘Thank god, the Ulstermen have feet of clay’

For years now, Britain’s elite has shuddered with horror at the sheer pig-headedness of the Orangemen. “Why won’t they just get with the programme?”, they ask? Instead we get a mulish restatement of ‘principles’, and endless rehearsal of mandates – how infra dig think the Tristrams at Broadcasting House, along with Peter’s friends in Westminster and Team Cameron.

For a while, the New Labour team, when that brand was still shiny, did hope that they had soulmates in New Sinn Fein. And in all honesty, Adams and McGuinness have tried their best. They learnt to elevate process over substance from the masters of the Third Way, Bill Clinton and Peter Mandelson. Gerry Adams visits Harvard University and the Middle East to lecture on ‘conflict resolution’ now.

And yet, and yet… still the republican spokesmen speak with such spectacularly forked tongues, as they dance around the questions of law and order, complicity and regret. For the British political class it is all just too arch. Secretly, of course, the English resent the Orangemen and republicans for the same reason: they are just too damned ‘principled’, just too political, really.

How thrilled we are to play Simon and Garfunkel over and over again and taunt ‘Here’s to you Mrs Robinson…’. As for Gerry Adams’s brother, it really is like Christmas two times over for Daily Mail. At last, the Ulstermen are dragged down to the scandal-driven freak show that English politics has been for twenty years.

Never mind that the bare facts of Iris Robinson’s downfall are only what men and women have been doing together since there were men and women. A woman had an affair with a man! That ought to be as much of a story as ‘dog bites man’. Still, we all know that this is the money shot. When the Tory minister David Mellor had an affair with a model that was not quite enough to kick off the Tory Sleaze bandwagon. But when we heard that he liked to do it in his Chelsea football strip, it was. Iris Robinson’s affair is the David Mellor moment. It is Monica Lewinsky. Seeing Peter Robinson cuckolded – and putting a brave face on it to keep his job is just too much fun to let go.

For the British press it is an even better story than Gerry Adams’s brother. In their hearts, the journalists all knew that it did not matter what the Mail printed about the Adams brothers. Republicans have been shrugging off black propaganda against Sinn Fein for years – why would they give this any credence just because there was some truth in it.

Now that Iris and Peter Robinson have crashed and burned, though, the British press get to re-heat the Adams’s story all over again. This time it is not black propaganda. This time it is relief: the British elite finally get to have a good laugh at the Ulstermen’s expense. Thank God, they are human, after all. Thank God, we do not have to be scared of them any more.

Of course, the broadsheet press are pretending that this is important for what it means for the ‘peace process’ – that is code for ‘serious stuff’. The peace process? Who cares about the peace process. We are all bored to death of the peace process. Others, keen to score a point, dwell on Iris Robinson’s condemnation of homosexuality. To the pure, everything is impure, as Mark Twain said. But do not be deceived. Commentators banging on about ‘hypocrisy’ are not interested in raising standards in public life, but on dragging everyone down to the same level. No, the real story is the scandal. Northern Ireland is reduced to the same ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ ritual humiliation that Westminster has been for years. Is Peter Robinson really going to troll round TV studios talking about his pain? We cannot get enough of it – the more degraded the better.

The real tragedy is that these non-stories have swept aside the old political positions, and found Adams and Robinson grappling with the same clichés, culled from marriage guidance, therapist-talk and misery lit.. Plainly Ulster politics was already at an impasse. The old positions were rehearsed without meaning, until they became empty incantations, appealing to ghost divisions of imagined supporters. Something had to give. Without real content to the rhetorical opposition the edifice had to collapse at some point.

Now northern Ireland has finally caught up with the rest of the world, where sleaze and scandal, personalities and public contrition take the place of reasoned programmes and political demands. Any rational person would fight with every breath to defend Iris and Peter Robinson, and Gerry Adams too, against this moronic inferno of press fascination with the seamier side of people’s personal behaviour. Sadly, neither of them is likely to stick up for themselves, but instead to draw us all into the degrading spectacle of apology and introspection. It is the end of politics, and it ought to be opposed. If Iris Robinson wanted to bathe naked in the blood of crucified virgins, while Gerry Adams tossed himself off, we still ought to be more interested in what political strategy they have for the future. No good will come from this scandal-mongering, which will only devour more and more of public life.

James Heartfield is a writer and lecturer based in London. He is director of the development think-tank Audacity.org. To visit his website, click here.