The decision of Northern Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris to back away from his threat to call an immediate election for a new Northern Assembly is to be welcomed. While the current political deadlock that has paralysed politics in the North since the last election in May is deeply frustrating, an early election could have inflamed divisions and made a bad situation even worse.
The threat of a pre-Christmas election was designed to force the hand of the DUP, but given that the party has made no secret of the fact that it relishes the prospect of being given another chance to win more seats than Sinn Féin it was an idle threat to begin with.
While Heaton-Harris is legally obliged to call a fresh Assembly election in Northern Ireland within the next 12 weeks, he is right to take his time and continue to talk to the parties and the Irish Government. He also has the option of doing what a previous British government did by introducing a one-line Bill to defer the election indefinitely.
In any early election the cornerstone of the DUP’s campaign will be its demand for the abolition of the Northern Ireland Protocol, but in fact the outcome of the Assembly election will have little bearing on the Protocol. While an early EU/UK agreement on the Protocol might make the restoration of power sharing in the North easier to achieve, it will not be influenced by the Assembly election result.
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Whatever happens, the British and Irish governments will need to come up with some fresh thinking to ensure that the DUP, or Sinn Féin for that matter, cannot continue to have a veto over the restoration of a devolved power sharing Executive. The governments should not shy away from a hard look at the mechanisms established by the Belfast Agreement, and its successor at St Andrews, which were designed to produce an Executive with the confidence of both communities.
In the run up to Friday’s deadline the Irish Government attempted to put some pressure on the DUP by suggesting that Dublin would have a consultative role in the running of Northern Ireland if direct rule from London was restored. Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar insisted that there could be no return to the “direct rule of the past” and suggested meaningful engagement between the Irish and British governments on non-devolved matters relating to the North.
The DUP has reacted angrily to this, seeing in it an attempt to move in the direction of joint authority. The two governments will have to face up to the fact that a continuing stalemate after another election is not an option. The DUP might be happy to go along with indefinite direct rule from London but the prospect of a more active role for the Dublin government might focus the party on the need to make devolution work.