Stormont deadline: NI politicians argue as election deadline looms

 

Northern Ireland's politicians are in a deadlock over restoring the power-sharing executive with hours remaining before a new election must be called.

The executive is made up of ministers from the largest parties and is designed to ensure unionists and nationalists govern together.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is stopping its formation in protest against the Northern Ireland Protocol.

If it is not restored, the NI secretary has said he will call an election.

Assembly members have been meeting at Stormont with Sinn Féin, which won the largest number of seats in the last assembly election in May, calling for the DUP to end its protest against the post-Brexit mechanism.

The DUP, which says the protocol undermines Northern Ireland's constitutional position, has refused to nominate ministers to the executive.

It denounced the assembly meeting as a "flawed and failed attempt" to restore power-sharing.

The prime minister has urged the DUP to return to Stormont, with an official spokesman saying "the people of Northern Ireland deserve a fully functioning and locally elected executive which can respond to the issues facing the communities there".

'Failure of leadership

Before a heated debate at Stormont on Thursday, Speaker Alex Maskey said: "If the assembly is unable to elect a speaker and deputy speakers, it cannot proceed to do any of the other business, including the appointment of ministers."

The election of a new speaker is required before an executive can be appointed but attempts to elect the SDLP's Patsy McGlone and Ulster Unionist Mike Nesbitt both failed.

Sinn Féin vice-president Michelle O'Neill, who is entitled to the first minister position in any new executive, accused DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson of a "failure of leadership".

She said that if power-sharing could not be restored, there should be a "joint approach" between London and Dublin.

The DUP's Paul Givan, whose resignation as the first minister in February collapsed the executive, said his party supported devolution, but the barrier to progress was the protocol.

It keeps Northern Ireland aligned with some EU trade rules to ensure goods can move freely across the Irish land border - from the UK into an EU member state, the Republic of Ireland.

There is no indication the deadlock will be broken before Friday's 00:01 BST deadline - 24 weeks since May's election.

If the deadline is missed, Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris must call for an assembly election to be held within 12 weeks. The most likely date for a poll is 15 December.

Ministers have been in post, but with only limited powers since the DUP withdrew from the executive in February.

This is because the DUP, which is the largest unionist party at Stormont, has also blocked the election of an assembly Speaker as part of its anti-protocol protests.

What happens if the election deadline is missed?

The rules state that Mr. Heaton-Harris, who has been in office since 6 September, must call an election "as soon as is practicable" within 12 weeks.

Caretaker ministers at Stormont will be removed from office and senior civil servants will be in charge.

The assembly - which has been meeting only for special recalls since May's election - would also be dissolved.

A pre-Christmas election would partly fill the void, but there is a risk it could make things worse rather than better.

Positions could harden during campaigning and, if there was a very low turnout, the validity of the result could be questioned.

As the DUP has said it will continue its protest against the NI Protocol, the election is unlikely in itself to break the stalemate.

So Northern Ireland could be further cycles of negotiations, up to 24 weeks, and future elections until a resolution is found or the law is changed.

Alliance Party leader and outgoing Justice Minister Naomi Long told the assembly that people were suffering in Northern Ireland because of events at Stormont.

Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Doug Beattie said the protocol was also an issue for his party, but "to fix these problems shouldn't be done at the detriment of having stable government".

Matthew O'Toole, of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), said crises in Northern Ireland's public services and the health service would deepen "by the day" without ministers.

Protocol conundrum

In May's assembly election, Sinn Féin became the first nationalist party to win the most number of seats at Stormont. The DUP came second, with the Alliance party returning with the third largest number of seats.

May's election cemented a majority of assembly members who accept the protocol, which created a new trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, something the EU has accepted is causing difficulties for many businesses.

Recent research conducted by Queen's University suggests the majority (65%) of those polled in Northern Ireland wanted an executive to be formed regardless of what happened on the protocol.

The LucidTalk poll was based on a weighted sample of 1,499 responses from 7-10 October, with a margin of error of 2.3%.

Sinn Féin, the Alliance Party, and the SDLP are all in favor of the protocol remaining, although they accept some changes need to be made to the way it operates.

The DUP - as well as the UUP and Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) - say the protocol undermines Northern Ireland's place in the UK and is contrary to the spirit of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the peace deal which set up the power-sharing arrangements in Northern Ireland.

Technical-level talks on how to fix problems with the post-Brexit treaty are expected to continue even in the event of fresh elections.

That's a change from earlier in the year when negotiations were paused ahead of May's assembly poll.

People close to the current talks say the mood is better between the two sides than it was back then.

However, there are also warnings that it's entirely possible, because of remaining differences between Brussels and London, that discussions could eventually run out of road.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and European Commission's Maros Sefcovic are to hold a call on Thursday about EU-UK talks on the protocol.

Earlier, former DUP leader and First Minister Peter Robinson urged his party not to return to the executive.

"Continue to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs," he wrote on his Facebook page. "You haven't come this far to only come this far."