Any room left for compromise?

But is it too late to save anything from the wreckage of last week’s debate and votes?

On the basis that personality politics would need to be overcome, and that the track record is not great in the relationship between proposers of option A and option D, the idea seems verging on fanciful. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Would any kind of compromise be enough to avoid a vote of confidence in Policy & Resources? It might well be, but we don’t hear rumblings of feverish work behind the scenes to attempt to take P&R down. We might discern it, but neither do we see hard evidence that the senior committee’s traditional backers have lost all enthusiasm to maintain the balance of power in the Assembly.

It is difficult to see how P&R can now contribute reasonably to a compromise agreement.

Having done all they personally can to save their own policy, some of it quite eloquent, and to strike down option D, any compromise now would have to leave a goods and services tax off the table, and so would be less of a compromise and more of a climbdown.

In the current climate, that just doesn’t make sense. The more likely prospect is for P&R just to limp on for the next couple of years.