Politics

London ‘reluctance’ to work with State hampering Stormont restoration efforts, says Varadkar

Closer partnership ‘crucial’ to resolving political crisis in North ahead of upcoming UK election

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said his conversations with the UK government and local parties still led him to hope that the Stormont executive could be revived this autumn. Photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times

Tue Aug 8 2023 - 15:53

London’s “reluctance” to work with Dublin is hampering the prospect of reaching a solution to end months of political crisis in Northern Ireland before a looming UK general election, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

Mr Varadkar called on London to ensure the two governments could “work hand-in-glove and apply both pressure and support ... in a co-ordinated way”, saying a closer partnership was “crucial” to restoring the Stormont powersharing executive.

“But there has been a reluctance, I suppose, in Downing Street, to go down that route,” Mr Varadkar told the Financial Times in an interview.

His assessment came as Northern Ireland’s biggest pro-UK party battles deep internal divisions over Brexit rules that take effect from October, straining hopes that Stormont could return after the summer recess in time for a US-backed Northern Ireland investment summit next month.

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The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) scuppered the region’s powersharing executive after elections in May last year, demanding an end to the Irish Sea trade border imposed by Brexit and to EU rules that it said treats Northern Ireland as a foreigner in its own country.

The Windsor Framework was agreed by London and Brussels earlier this year to ease problems with the original Brexit deal. It establishes a customs check-free “green lane” for goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain that takes effect from October.

But the DUP still wants guarantees from London that the region’s place in the UK and ability to trade with Britain will be safe.

Mr Varadkar, who is due to meet political leaders in Belfast this week, said his conversations with the UK government and local parties still led him to hope that the Stormont executive could be revived this autumn.

But he acknowledged: “It is more hope than expectation at this stage, to be frank.

“If we don’t seize this window of opportunity in the next couple of months, talk will turn both in Belfast and in London to the next Westminster elections and it might be after that before we can get things going again.”

Northern Ireland, which is mired in a deepening financial crisis, is hosting a US investment conference on September 12th-13th and a US trade mission on October 24th. Both are intended to highlight the unique dual access to both the EU and UK markets the region enjoys despite Brexit.

Doug Beattie, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), last week called for the investment conference to be delayed and merged with the October trade mission, telling the BBC there was a “better chance” of Stormont being revived by then.

Mr Varadkar said the UK and Ireland, co-guarantors of the 1998 Good Friday deal that ended three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland and set up powersharing, needed to work in tandem to get Stormont back.

“The Good Friday Agreement functions when Dublin and London have a common strategy and work hand-in-glove and apply both pressure and support to the five parties in a co-ordinated way. And that’s been absent now for a long time, unfortunately,” he said.

A senior government official in London said “active dialogue” was taking place with the DUP to end the Stormont stand-off. Heading down a route that invites Irish government involvement in restoring the executive would be problematic for the unionist community, the official added.

The UK government’s Northern Ireland Office said it was committed to co-operating with the Irish government under the Good Friday Agreement but “firmly believes ... the best route to securing the timely restoration of the Northern Ireland institutions” is through co-operation between the region’s parties and the UK government.

Ending the impasse appears to be an uphill battle given divisions within the DUP over the Windsor framework. DUP peer Lord Nigel Dodds issued a 1,600-word criticism of the deal, claiming it failed the seven tests the party had set to measure its support.

Problems highlighted in a recent House of Lords report “justify our grave concerns” with the framework, Mr Dodds added.

Mr Dodds’ statement was posted on the party’s website, piling pressure on DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, who is widely believed to want to get Stormont back quickly and has not yet issued a formal verdict on the seven tests five months after appointing a panel to study it in detail.

“The DUP have to make a crucial choice,” said Alex Kane, a former UUP communications director, who said Donaldson needed to find the “courage” to face down his critics and take his party back to Stormont.

With the DUP no longer the biggest party at a regional or council level and Catholics now outnumbering the DUP’s traditional Protestant base in Northern Ireland, “the notion that [they] can sit out of all of this and bring everything down and expect to still influence events is delusional,” he said. – The Financial Times

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