Editorial: The DUP and Sinn Fein unveil an ill-timed budget

​In Scotland the civil service wrote to the first minister when an election was called and advised against the publication of the Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS).

This is the equivalent of Stormont’s June monitoring round, from which funds were released yesterday.​

The News Letter has found that the permanent secretary to the Scottish government explained why MTFS “publication on a revised timeline” after the election was appropriate. We have also found that Wales did the same.

The SDLP has reacted to the announcement of £300m of NI spending just days before the poll with the scepticism that an opposition party should. Matthew O’Toole described it as an “abuse of civil service impartiality” and a breach of the executive’s own pre-election rules.

A weak civil service has failed to set down limits to cynical politicians who repeatedly prove incapable of taking difficult financial decisions. The assembly at times has the governing tactics of a child: demand more money, heedless of where it comes from. Shout and complain if it is not given on demand. Then seek credit for the nice-sounding things, even if credit is not due.

Did the DUP deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly feel unease standing beside not one but two politicians from a party as cynical and populist as Sinn Fein in yesterday’s announcement? (SF having been allowed to take three of the prime Stormont ministries in February). The first minister, Michelle O’Neill said: “Why should this wait?”. Ms Little-Pengelly agreed that the announcement, like health, “can’t wait”. But it could have waited to Friday, given the multi-party election the day before.

For two years we were told Stormont was indispensable, not least by people who could not believe their luck that NI was about to entrench an Irish Sea border. ​Yet this is an unflattering display of how MLAs can operate.