The Northern Secretary has urged the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to avoid a Christmas election by going back into government in Northern Ireland ahead of Friday’s deadline.
Speaking on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, Chris Heaton-Harris said the DUP had an “opportunity” to re-enter the power-sharing administration at Stormont and there was a “choice” which could be made to prevent an election.
However, he re-emphasised his previous commitment that if a resolution was not reached, he would be under a “legal requirement to call it [an election] at one minute past midnight on the 28th of October”.
He said the DUP had an “opportunity to come back and it’s really important, actually, I think, that they do because there’s so many domestic issues in Northern Ireland that would be helped by their re-entry into the Executive.”
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Northern Ireland has been without a functioning government at Stormont since the Assembly election in May, when the DUP refused to re-enter the power-sharing administration until its demands over the Northern Ireland protocol – which it opposes – were met.
Despite the Northern Secretary’s comments there is no expectation of a breakthrough which would resolve the impasse in time to avoid an election, which is pencilled in for December 15th.
On Sunday, the DUP again emphasised its position had not changed and reiterated it would not go back into Stormont until the protocol “rubble” was removed.
Speaking over the weekend Taoiseach Micheál Martin urged the DUP to help restore the Executive, saying other political parties wanted a functioning Assembly. “Otherwise we are denying democracy, denying the mandate that the people of Northern Ireland have given to their elected representatives to form a parliament.”
Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said is impossible to solve the problems of the protocol between now and next Friday “because there isn’t a prime minister that can make the necessary decisions to work with the EU to do that.”
In a weekend message to party members, the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said he wanted “to see fully functioning devolved government restored in Stormont but that can only happen when the protocol is replaced by arrangements that unionists can support.
“When a new prime minister is in place, if they want to see a fully functioning Stormont, they will have to deal with the protocol once and for all,” he said.
In a separate interview on Sky, the Northern Ireland Office minister, Steve Baker, appeared to back the DUP’s stance, saying he had taken “big hits” when he apologised for his previous approach on Brexit but “everyone needs to understand that the legitimate interest of unionists is to end the jurisdiction of EU law in Northern Ireland.
“We will not have devolved government in Northern Ireland until it’s done,” he said. “That means we won’t be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement next year.”
Mr Baker, who is backing Rishi Sunak in the Conservative leadership contest, said current UK government policy on the protocol “must be continued” and, if Mr Sunak becomes the next prime minister, he would “follow through on the current policy… no-one should be in any doubt about this”.
“The EU, and I hope they’ll hear me, the EU should understand there’s not going to be a change of policy.”
Whoever wins the leadership contest, he said, should understand there could be no other policy otherwise “the Eurosceptics would implode the [UK] government.”
Mr Heaton-Harris is backing Boris Johnson to return as British prime minister, and said “this is a time when we need a big player like Boris in our politics.”
Sinn Féin MP John Finucane said there must be an end to the “reckless Tory threats that have fuelled instability and caused damage on the international stage”.
“Whoever leads the incoming British government must make the restoration of the Assembly and Executive an immediate priority and end the cycle of pandering to the DUP,” he said.
“The outcome of May’s Assembly election must be respected,” he said, adding that the UK government must “continue to work constructively with the EU to find solutions for our businesses who need certainty not instability”.
