Britain should “double down” on efforts to resolve the impasse over the Northern Ireland protocol rather than calling fresh elections for the Stormont Assembly, Democratic Unionist Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson has said.
Mr Donaldson suggested an election would change nothing and blamed “chaos” at Westminster for the failure of London and Brussels to make progress on the post-Brexit arrangements over recent months.
“We’ve had three [British] prime ministers, Westminster at times has been in chaos, there’s been little focus on getting a solution to the protocol,” he told Sky News on Sunday.
“The talks with the EU only started again a couple of weeks ago, and even then only at a tactical level, not at a political level.”
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Mr Donaldson said he welcomed the EU being “now at the negotiating table” after for a refusing to engage while his party sought a solution to the issues for more that two years.
“It reached a point where our ministers in Stormont were required to impose measures on the people of Northern Ireland as a result of the protocol that every single day was harming our economy, our businesses, driving up the cost of living for households,” he said.
“We never supported the protocol, we made clear it would harm Northern Ireland, it would create instability and so it has, and I welcome the commitment now of the EU to negotiate a new solution.”
Northern Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris announced on Friday that he would call fresh Assembly elections – less than six months after the region went to the polls in May – but declined to immediately name a date.
He insisted he was legally obliged to announce an election after the DUP again blocked the formation of a power-sharing Executive before Friday’s deadline over its opposition to the protocol. Election staff are working towards a date of December 15th.
Sinn Féin’s Stormont leader Michelle O’Neill said the DUP’s blocking of attempts to restore devolved government was more to do with the party’s distaste for a nationalist party being the largest in Northern Ireland for the first time.
“I don’t think it’s lost on the wider public that the DUP don’t like the May election result, I don’t think it’s lost on the wider public that they have difficulty in forming a government to be a deputy first minister to my mandate which is to be the first minister given the recent election results,” she told Sky News.
“I think it’s not lost on people that that’s the real motivation here… The DUP hide behind the issues of the protocol, they hide behind all of that.”
Ms O’Neill urged “mature, sensible political discussion” between London and Brussels to “find an agreed way to solve the issues around the protocol”, which she insisted was “a necessity” and “here to stay”.
The protocol was brokered by Britain and the EU as a result of Brexit – which was backed by the DUP and rejected by the majority of voters in the North – to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland. Some unionists say it undermines the North’s place in the UK by establishing a de-facto border for goods in the Irish Sea.
“There are things that can be smoothed out, there are things that can be made to work better, and I’m up for that and hope that’s what we achieve in the coming weeks and months,” said Ms O’Neill.
Meanwhile, SDLP MP Claire Hanna said a letter from the Loyalist Communities Council – an umbrella group for loyalist paramilitaries – threatening “dire consequences” if there is joint British-Irish authority over Northern Ireland in the absence of devolution was designed to stoke up sectarian tensions. The British government has ruled out introducing joint authority.
The letter warned Irish Government Ministers to stay away from the North “whilst the protocol remains”.
Speaking on BBC NI’s Sunday Politics, Ms Hanna said the letter “may be a tactic to get the blood up in people and to create an enhanced sectarian tension but unfortunately that has been a tool used over the years”.
“That’s never helped this place before and it’s not going to help this place now,” she said.
