Choice Cuts From Cameron
By telling our ministers they can take the pain now or take it in the next financial year, the Prime Minister has posed the Stormont Executive with a difficult choice. Their track record on water charges and freezing rates would appear to indicate the Executive will choose procrastination (or what the Alliance termed in their recent manifesto "cheap populism.") Peter Robinson says the decision may be governed by the breakdown of any proposed cuts between capital and revenue - if the Stormont capital budget is hit they may defer this to avoid an immediate impact on the local construction industry.
Messrs Robinson and McGuinness will get a chance to compare notes on the cuts with their Scottish and Welsh counterparts who are expected to visit Stormont at the start of next week.
One aspect of the potential deferral which caused some puzzlement amongst DUP aides is why the Conservatives did not make more of it during the election campaign. That way, they may have softened the assault on their local candidates after Mr Cameron's Paxman interview comments. Perhaps the answer is that they hadn't thought of offering the deferral at that stage in the game.
So the Executive faces a dillemma over postponing cuts. Down the line it could also face a dillemma over the Conservative proposal for lowering Corporation Tax, because, as this blog has pointed out before, that will require cutting the budget elsewhere. The discussion on Good Morning Ulster today between a business advocate and a trade unionist could be just the start of a period of classic left-right debates dominating our local politics.
Initially our cameras were invited in to record a reception the new Prime Minister attended at Belfast City Airport for his defeated general election candidates here. His message was that the Conservative and Ulster Unionist link doesn't have to be over. But before the meeting began our cameras were asked to leave. Now if the Conservatives and Unionists had managed to return three or four MPs to Westminster would the Cameron entourage have wanted that reception to be off camera?
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