Northern Ireland facing another election
BELFAST: A deadline to resume power-sharing in Northern Ireland’s regional government has passed, setting the Uk-run province on a course to its second election this year amid a political stand-off over divisive post-brexit trade rules.
The expiration of the legal cut-off point for the creation of a joint executive between proIreland nationalists and proUK unionists, which the British government has vowed to enforce, came after parties made a last-ditch attempt to restart Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly.
In an argumentative Thursday session, MPS briefly reconvened for the first time in months for a special sitting but failed, in a widely anticipated
outcome, to elect a speaker needed to form a new executive.
The pro-uk Democratic Unionist Party blocked the resumption of power-sharing due to concerns about the so-called
Northern Ireland Protocol governing post-brexit trade.
The party has boycotted the assembly since February, and in spite of the results of May elections, calling for the protocol to be overhauled or scrapped entirely.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said the party would not vote for a new speaker because insufficient action had been taken to address its demands since it collapsed the executive.
“We need to remove the rubble of the protocol that has undermined our economy, that has inhibited our ability to trade within our own country,” he said ahead of the failed vote.
Mr Donaldson said the arrangements “changed our constitutional status without our consent” and were “harming businesses and driving up the cost of living for every single person in Northern Ireland”.
However, Matthew O’toole, of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, said holding another election was a “farce” and that the continued boycott had left him “ashamed of this place”.
“While this assembly sat mothballed and silent people’s homes have got colder, their trust in politics has fallen even further and their lives have gotten harder,” he said.
New British PM Rishi Sunak’s has implored the parties to “get back to Stormont”, arguing that people there “deserve a fully functioning and locally elected executive”.