Has Donal Trump been talking to someone on this side of the Atlantic? Probably not. Other sources, including the voices in his head, have told him that he should revoke the Iran nuclear deal. Revoke – a darlin’ word. The original Iran nuclear deal was signed up to in 2015 by China, France, Germany, Russia and Britain. So Trump has taught those five countries – as well as Iran – that the US’s signature on an agreement/treaty means nothing. No wonder they burnt the US flag in the Iranian parliament.
But of course Trump is not the first person to go back on an agreement. Back in the good old days when Peter Robinson was First Minister, there was an agreement to develop the Maze/Long Kesh site to the tune of some £300 million. A renowned architect had been employed to design the Peace Centre. The First and Deputy First Minister had cut the first sod in a well-publicized ceremony. And then, off in the US, Peter penned a letter saying, um, no, when he’d gone along with all that development deal he wasn’t thinking straight but now he was. So forget my agreement and that sod-cutting and the rest of it. Deal’s off. I’m out.
Then there’s the St Andrews Agreement. This allowed the DUP to go on saying they totally rejected the Good Friday Agreement, the Agreement they were behind was the St Andrews Agreement of 2006. Here’s a bit from the St Andrews Agreement: “The Government will introduce an Irish Language Act reflecting on the experience of Wales and Ireland and work with the incoming Executive to enhance and protect the development of the Irish language”. OK, let’s forget for the moment whether, by signing the St Andrews Agreement, the DUP were signing up to everything in it or just the bits they liked. Let’s focus instead on Britain. That bit about “The Government” refers to the British government. They signed up to implementing an Irish Language Act. Did they follow through and deliver? Does the Pope play at centre-forward for Ballymena?
It’s got to the stage where, if you want to be sure that people will be true to their word and what they’ve committed to, you need to have stinging penalties in place for those who don’t deliver. What those might be, particularly in the case of someone as powerful as Trump, is hard to say. But we can be certain of one thing: for a certain class of person, putting their signature on a document means diddley-squat. You need a penalty strong enough to make sure people deliver on promises. So here’s my suggestion for local breaches of good faith: if someone signs up to something and then fails to deliver, all parties are agreed that the bad-faith leader should be painted purple and made to walk down the Stormont Mile naked. I was going to add that assembled crowds could throw tomatoes and other over-ripe vegetables at them as they walked, but nah – the purple and naked should be enough.
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“The Government will introduce an Irish Language Act reflecting on the experience of Wales and Ireland and work with the incoming Executive to enhance and protect the development of the Irish language.”
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China, France, Germany, Russia and Britain
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