Northern Irish people will vote for the second time this year: the British government is preparing to call a snap election on Friday in an uncertain attempt to break the political deadlock caused by the province’s post-Brexit status.
After a last-ditch meeting of Northern Irish parliamentarians on Thursday, the deadline set by London passed without the Unionists, attached to belonging to the United Kingdom, bending and agreeing to end their boycott of the local institutions.
UK Northern Ireland Minister Chris Heaton-Harris is expected to call an election by mid-December, six months after the previous vote.
Early elections “will definitely take place”, confirmed Therese Coffey, British Minister for the Environment and spokesperson for the government on Friday on the Sky News channel.
“It is regrettable that the parties failed to form an executive together but the law is clear […] and there was not enough agreement to avoid an election,” she said.
The political blockage is due to the fact that the unionist party DUP, opposed to the post-Brexit provisions, refuses to participate in the local assembly, preventing the formation of an executive. The latter must be shared with the Republicans of Sinn Fein, supporters of reunification with the Republic of Ireland and victorious in local elections in May, under the 1998 peace agreement which ended three decades of conflict. intercommunity (3,500 dead).
Border
Even before Thursday’s local assembly meeting in Belfast began, unionist DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson had dashed already dim hopes of a compromise, saying unsurprisingly that his party “would not take part in an executive until no decisive action has been taken on the protocol”.
Unionists (especially Protestants) are calling for the repeal of this agreement negotiated between London and Brussels at the time of Brexit, which establishes a special customs status for the province to avoid the return of a physical border with the neighboring Republic of Ireland.
According to them, the protocol creates a de facto customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country, an unacceptable attack on the integrity of the United Kingdom, and disrupts supplies to the province.
Sinn Fein leader Michelle O’Neill has accused the Unionists of ‘denying the results of the May election’ and of crippling power amid a cost of living crisis.
“We respect the mandate given to the other parties […] we are simply asking that our mandate be respected, ”Mr. Donaldson justified himself on the BBC on Friday. “We cannot in good conscience appoint ministers to an executive who are being asked to impose a protocol that hurts our economy and hurts people.”
“Nothing has progressed”
For lack of government, it is London that manages current affairs but many files are frozen.
London wants to renegotiate the protocol with Brussels, which only accepts minor adjustments. While British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has stressed that he wants to find a “negotiated solution” on the issue, no concrete progress has been put on the table for the moment.
“The last six months we’ve had chaos in Westminster, we’ve had three prime ministers […] and during this time nothing has moved forward to resolve the problem of the protocol, ”lamented Mr. Donaldson on Friday.
He said earlier this week that he was “ready to go into battle” in the election, less than six months after the last election. He even warned that the party’s election propaganda had already been approved.
The defeat of his party in the last elections reflects a fundamental trend in the British province, created initially for Unionist Protestants: Catholics, who represent the bulk of the Republican community, are now more numerous there, according to a recent census, which is likely to encourage supporters of reunification with the Republic of Ireland.