Daniel McCrossan: Rhetoric, Expenses & RHI (Part 2) by Donal Lavery

If you have been following this blog you will notice that my last article caused a bit of a stir in the SDLP camp. Mr McCrossan took to Facebook and Twitter to rubbish my scribblings without actually denying the central points outlined in all of the other media references provided. This wannabe-politician deemed me a “wannabe-commentator”, when more people read these blogs than vote for him, in true Machiavellian-amateur form. So they’ve all got it wrong then Danny Boy about your party?

Note also, that this man failed to address, never mind deny, any of the other points made about SDLP representatives and their lucrative expenses (particularly their MPs) as well as consistently employing relatives with public resources and using public money on office premises owned by relatives – as was the case with the exposure of former Ethics Chair, Carmel Hanna (Claire Hanna’s mother). Additionally, he couldn’t bring himself to elaborate on the facts surrounding the huge internal party controversy over his very own notorious selection as an Assembly-man from within his own ranks. Glossing over the fact that even his own former colleagues in the SDLP, including a respected local GP, had serious misgivings/concerns about him being elevated into that position, with a letter of complaint citing misconduct having been filed. Long standing SDLP Councillors Josephine Deehan and Patsy Kelly actually walked out of the party with other members over what they alleged to be ‘cronyism’ in Mr McCrossan’s selection – going on to add (Councillor Deehan) that “With the advent of the Assembly we have seen the arrival of career politicians whose priorities are self-advancement and self-perpetuation rather than the daily struggles of ordinary people and the hardships they face.” Their words, not mine.

Of course it’s not the first time there has been controversy within the SDLP, particularly surrounding family members benefitting from from political appointments – not that Daniel would ever care to highlight any of this in his rants; Claire Hanna (Carmel Hanna’s daughter), the South Belfast MLA, caused a bit of media scrutiny from the Belfast Telegraph when her husband, a senior SDLP Policy Adviser, was immediately appointed to replace her on Belfast City Council without having mentioned this in her constituency literature – that she was being directly replaced by her spouse, sitting  Belfast Councillor Donal Lyons. Moreover, remember disgraced former MLA and leadership hopeful Conal McDevitt? Remember how he was forced to resign for accepting thousands in payments from his former employer after becoming a “full time” Assembly-man; while having claimed tens of thousands of pounds in expenses for his own wife’s consultancy firm, JM Consulting (reference below)? Remember former Deputy Leader Seamus Mallon being ordered to repay close to £2000 in petty cash expenses after the exposure of a Westminster inquiry by The Independent Newspaper? It doesn’t stop there, remember that article by the Irish Times back in 2009 made reference to the fact that SDLP politicians were claiming expenses off  the Dublin Government as far back as the 70s, for meetings with Free State officials which never actually took place when the tallies were accounted for? Remember how SDLP Special Advisers have been in receipt of up to £92,000 per year (more than a full time hospital surgeon) while also working as Councillors? When Daniel talks about the blistering effects of the DUP’s RHI fiasco on the public purse, has he ever considered the impact his own party has on societal revenue? Maybe he will be so generous as to put these facts on social media too, in the same scrutiny he tries to subject others to. For it was the late Paddy Devlin who opined that the Church had stuffed the SDLP full of right-wing Catholics and the shadowy Knights of Columbanus, bitterly opposed to any prospect of egalitarianism.

Indeed, Mr McCrossan likes to overlook such details from his own side in his outbursts concerning other parties and their finances. He is the “politician” who from his initial selection controversy is once bitten but certainly not twice shy, as many of his constituents and some party members have asserted. In lamenting the highlighting of these details on this blog, he branded it to be “sickening” and a bias against his party – which is an interesting choice of words for someone on the Public Accounts Committee, given the assumption they would likely welcome full transparency and detailed coverage of their own statements (past and present) and party financial affairs. You would think he would reserve his ‘colourful’ use of language for the Irish News, who first reported on his involvement in the RHI scandal in the first place. Are all those media outlets also stooges for his political opponents, as he remarked about my blog? Has everybody simply got it wrong about the SDLP and their approach to public resources? They seem to believe that to highlight these issues means someone is full of “hate” for them, as opposed to what they stand for – and who, precisely, they stand with.

In the upcoming Westminster election, all the other parties probably wouldn’t need to canvass at all in West Tyrone, for if you give Mr McCrossan’s social media ego a read then you’ll find that he is their biggest electoral recruiting sergeant. It’s a case of giving him a big enough pot to cook his own turkey. For when it comes to replying to coverage of his  eruditions, it reminds me of the infamous encounter between Jeremy Paxman and Michael Howard – although he’s certainly no Jeremy Paxman, so he really must be Michael Howard! And given that an election is fast approaching, he couldn’t even apply himself to answer the single question of how electing him as MP for West Tyrone would prevent Theresa May from using the Royal Prerogative to impose her Brexit arrangements without parliamentary consent? How will he possibly “take the fight the Tories”, as he vainly suggests, when his vote won’t be worth tuppence by way of confidence and supply under the UK electoral system? Maybe this quintessential Redmondite can make better use of his social media accounts and answer that one direct question for the benefit of his worried constituents who voted Remain. For the truth is, he knows fine rightly he isn’t going to be able to alter the Brexit process or any other agenda in any meaningful way by going to Westminster, where he will be less than 0.5% of MP’s, in a parliament engulfed with autocratic imperial trappings. The Scots have far more MPs and cannot inhibit the motivations of a government dominated by Englishmen. The only time his party ever held any sway at Westminster was when they opted to bring down the Callaghan Government and usher in Margaret Thatcher (gaining Lord Fitt’s peerage in return).

-Talk about trying to turn liabilities into assets; I and many others do hope he becomes the next leader of the SDLP, for he’ll floor the accelerator to extinction much quicker than just about anyone else.

http://www.sdlp.ie/news/2016/mccrossan-rhi-shutdown-raises-concern-over-70-omagh-jobs/

http://ulsterherald.com/2015/10/27/rift-in-sdlp-continues-as-party-chair-steps-down/

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/government-paid-expenses-to-senior-sdlp-politicians-1.796186?mode=am