Stormont now has no plausible excuse for failure. That doesn’t mean failure is impossible

Naomi Long is hardly alone in fearing Stormont will return only to collapse again.

“Given the fragility of relationships, not just between the parties but inside some parties, if we are going to have stable institutions the government now needs to engage seriously on the issue of reform,” the Alliance leader said on Tuesday.

While that may be true, a restored Stormont should be more stable than is widely realised. Significant reforms have already been delivered under the 2020 New Decade, New Approach deal. If one of the largest parties walks out of the executive, every other party remains in office for six months, rather than the previous one or two weeks. The Assembly remains in operation until an election is called, which in practice could be several years, able to pass laws that thwart or subvert a boycott. The potential of this is one reason why the DUP collapsed the Assembly in 2022, having initially said it would only collapse the Executive. There have also been reforms to the Assembly’s veto mechanism, the petition of concern.

The impact of these changes has never been tested because they were not enacted until February 2022, five days after the DUP’s first minister resigned. A month later, the Assembly had to be dissolved for a scheduled election.

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Walking out of Stormont is now a different proposition. The next Assembly election is due in May 2027. Any party quitting the executive before then would be leaving everyone else to govern without it for six months, then legislate for further months or years.

Mid-2027 will take Stormont well beyond the next British and Irish general elections. It is enough time for Sinn Féin to get into office in Dublin and for unionists to get used to it – or for Sinn Féin to not get into office and get over it.

Labour should replace the Tories in Britain, begin the review of the UK-EU trade deal scheduled in 2025 and make two years of progress towards a softer Brexit, which could ultimately make the Windsor Framework redundant.

Three years is also ample time to heal the apparent 60/40 divide within the DUP over the deal to restore devolution. This division is as much about the tactical wisdom of returning to work as the constitutional principles at stake. Unless the deal unravels in an immediate fiasco, nerves should soon settle. Fears of a party split already appear overdone.

The DUP remains a hostage to sea border absurdities, such as an EU ban on amalgam tooth fillings reported two weeks ago. A steady stream of these stories is inevitable and guaranteed to raise unionist hackles. Windsor Framework difficulties are meant to be addressed by UK-EU committees, with Stormont input. It is a positive sign that this week’s deal follows months of negotiations and briefings between London, Brussels, the DUP and Sinn Féin. The deal delivers genuine improvements, including legal changes to the Windsor Framework proclaimed to be impossible. There were almost no leaks, until farcical leaking from a DUP meeting on Monday.

Sinn Féin will use the restoration of Stormont to talk about a united Ireland, as is its right. However, the party is distancing itself from calls for a Border poll this decade, despite a reference to “touching distance” by president Mary Lou McDonald, while Labour has said it will not discuss the terms for calling a poll. A constitutional high-wire act seems off the agenda for the medium term. Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin’s first minister in waiting, has been trying to avoid provocative republican rhetoric, with varied success. But grotesque lauding of the IRA will occur – it is fundamental to the party’s nature.

Perhaps the greatest threat to Stormont’s stability over the next few years is the daunting challenges it faces on health, education, social services and infrastructure, all largely caused by its own neglect. This week’s deal includes a £3.3 billion (€3.87 billion) lump sum, plus a new regional funding formula guaranteeing public spending per head will always be at least 24 per cent higher than in England. Perversely, this could unsettle Stormont by removing any plausible financial excuse for failure. Problems will far too clearly be due to incompetence and unwillingness to take difficult decisions.

Much of Stormont’s current dysfunction began with an unofficial Sinn Féin boycott from 2012. The party did not want to be embarrassed in the Republic over enacting UK-wide welfare reforms, so it blocked executive business for three years until the DUP finally threatened to walk out.

The greater policy challenges facing Stormont today and the larger significance of North-South politics make problems like this more likely. There is nothing in New Decade, New Approach to stop a party going on undeclared strike.

Sinn Féin wants to show it is fit for government in the Republic, without suggesting it will do anything unpopular. On the balance of that calculation, Northern Ireland’s future government rests.