Northern Ireland to hold fresh elections, says UK minister

The UK’s Northern Ireland secretary has said fresh elections will be held after a failure to restore a power-sharing executive at Stormont by Friday’s deadline, but declined to specify a date.

Chris Heaton-Harris said he understood that the prospect of a return to the polls was unpopular, but that he was not U-turning.

“We are where we are . . . I’m under a legal duty to call an election within 12 weeks,” he told reporters in Belfast on Friday.

“I’ve had lots and lots of talks with all the parties and will continue to do so. I hear it when parties say that they do not want an election at all. But nearly all of them were parties who signed up to the . . . law that means I need to call an election,” he added.

“So you’ll hear more from me on that particular point next week.”

Officials have indicated December 15 as the likeliest date for any election.

Sinn Féin, the pro-Irish unity party that won the last elections in May, blamed its pro-UK rival the Democratic Unionist party for the collapse of the devolved executive.

The DUP in turn blamed London. Since the May elections, the party has vetoed the formation of an executive to press its demand to scrap the so-called Northern Ireland protocol governing post-Brexit trade, which it says undermines the region’s status in the UK.

“This isn’t a matter of disagreement between parties . . . this is a matter of the DUP refusing to work with anyone,” Conor Murphy, who was until midnight the region’s finance minister, told BBC Radio Ulster.

Failure to reestablish the executive by Friday’s deadline means civil servants are now in charge at Stormont with limited powers until a new executive is formed.

But local parties said they expected no end to the deadlock and for Stormont to remain mothballed for months.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the UK could have extended the deadline to form an executive at Stormont, given the recent political turbulence in Westminster.

“We’ve had six months in which to do something about the protocol and during those six months we’ve had three prime ministers . . . and we haven’t seen the progress that is needed,” he added.

Ireland’s foreign minister Simon Coveney this week told the Financial Times an election was “unnecessary” and called on the UK to find compromises with Brussels by the end of the year on the protocol’s implementation.

Heaton-Harris has previously said Westminster would pass a budget for Northern Ireland if an executive could not be formed. The lack of an executive has contributed to a £700mn hole in the region’s public finances.

The prospect of continued gridlock has raised fears Stormont itself is dead.

“This feels like a wake for devolution,” Matthew O’Toole of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour party told BBC Radio Ulster.

Sinn Féin and the SDLP, as well as the Irish government, say there can be no return to direct rule from London if Stormont cannot be revived. Instead of direct rule, they want Dublin to have a greater say over how Northern Ireland is run.

But in a letter on Thursday to unionist leaders, the Loyalist Communities Council, whose members include representatives of the main loyalist paramilitary groups, warned “loyalist activists . . . would be powerless to prevent an unprecedented reaction” if any joint authority were agreed.

Northern Ireland has relied on power-sharing between nationalists and unionists since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended the three decades-old Troubles, in which republican paramilitaries fought to oust British rule and loyalist gunmen battled to keep Northern Ireland in the UK.

But the Alliance party, which surged to third place in the May elections and takes no position on the constitutional question, said a reset was needed to end the region’s “ransom politics”, whereby either of the biggest communities can collapse or veto an executive.