What does the storm in Stormont mean for Northern Irish voters?

If the situation continues to deterioriate then the province will, in effect, be governed by civil servants and ministers in the Northern Ireland Office. Sean O'Grady explains why the ultimate losers will be the Northern Irish voters

Michelle O’Neill and Paul Givan outside the parliament building in Belfast on Thursday (PA)

“Crisis” is a term that’s never far away in Northern Ireland, but the current storm in Stormont is building up more quickly and more ominously than usual. The Democratic Unionists have defied their new leader, Edwin Poots, and refused to back his nominee, Paul Givan, as the new first minister.

The NI assembly did install Givan as first minister, and Michelle O’Neill as deputy first minister, so the executive can function, but it remains in danger of collapse after so many DUP assembly members insisted Poots stall the nomination of Givan. Poots, freshly elected as the party leader, resigned after just 20 days in power; his successor will find themselves in exactly the same impossible position.

If things carry on deteriorating at the present rate, Northern Ireland could find itself with the unwelcome distinction of being the most undemocratic state in Europe, or at least this side of Belarus. If the power-sharing executive collapses (again) then the province will, in effect, be governed by civil servants and ministers in the Northern Ireland Office. With much of its trading rules and relations run by Brussels, and the arguments about Brexit and the Northern Ireland protocol being conducted between Brussels, Dublin and Westminster, and above the heads of the people of Northern Ireland, the average voter there has next to no say on what happens to them.

The centre of the present argument is the Irish language – its status, “protections” for Irish speakers, and parallel rights for the cultural traditions of the Ulster-Scots/British tradition. It is a sensitive issue, going straight to the heart of identity politics, which usually defines allegiances, and has marred political relations for many years. It was one of the reasons why the power-sharing executive fell apart in 2017, and was also partly behind the ousting of DUP leader and first minister, Arlene Foster. Ironically enough, it was Givan, as the then NI communities minister who helped provoke Martin McGuinness into collapsing the NI Executive in 2017 – “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. With the growing tensions over Brexit, Northern Ireland is growing more unstable. Remarks the other day from President Macron suggesting that the EU doesn’t consider it part of the UK haven’t helped, either.

So frustrated has the secretary of state, Brandon Lewis, grown that he has told the DUP that if they don’t come to some compromise deal with Sinn Fein over these cultural issues, he will override them and legislate at Westminster to make the changes. This was sufficient to win Sinn Fein’s support for the executive to continue. Rationally, then, the DUP should prefer to frame a bill locally with Sinn Fein, so that they would at least have a say and make the best of what they regard as a very bad job. However, that is to fatally underestimate the Unionists’ traditional obduracy, and even Poots seems to have been surprised, and now overwhelmed, by the truculence of his colleagues. Despite its well-rehearsed rituals and historic divisions, political life in Northern Ireland is rarely predictable and seldom hopeful.