Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Seismic shift doesn’t mask old problems..
AS the election count comes to a close, we now know what the next Stormont Assembly will look like.
Sinn Fein makes history as the first nationalist party to take the largest number of seats in a Northern Ireland Assembly election.
The DUP drops to second-largest after sustaining a number of losses, but remains the biggest unionist party.
Alliance, unaligned on the constitutional question, becomes the third-largest party after witnessing a surge in support.
Smaller unionist and nationalist parties, the UUP and SDLP, as well as the
Green Party, suffered a significant squeeze of their vote shares in this seismic shift in Stormont politics.
But as the dust settles on the Northern Ireland
Assembly election 2022, the future of Stormont looks uncertain.
The DUP withdrew its First Minister in protest over the Northern Ireland Protocol, collapsing Stormont’s mandatory power-sharing Executive.
The party is also refusing to re-enter the Executive until its concerns over the post-Brexit Irish Sea trade checks are addressed.
It was believed the Queen’s speech next week may contain something on the Protocol that would encourage the DUP to reform an executive.
But on the eve of polling day,
Secretary of State Brandon Lewis intimated no such legislation is likely to feature.
As the largest party, Sinn Fein is entitled to nominate for the position of First Minister.
However, during the campaign, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson had refused to say if his party would accept the Deputy First Minister post.
Following legislation passed though Westminster in February, it is expected current Stormont ministers can remain in office in a caretaker capacity for up to six months.
If no new government is formed in this time, the NI Secretary may have to call fresh elections.
There is also another election to consider. If Sir Jeffrey takes the Assembly seat he won in Lagan Valley he would have to give up his MP role, triggering a by-election.
But with Stormont’s future unclear, Sir Jeffrey could temporarily co-opt someone else to Stormont to remain at Westminster.
With the rise of Alliance, there will also be further pressure to reform Stormont’s system of mandatory power-sharing between the largest parties of unionism and nationalism.
Naomi Long’s party wants an end to mandatory coalitions, thus removing the ability of any big party to prevent an executive being established.
All this points to the potential for protracted talks that could last months and NI could be without a functioning government for some time.