DUP leader threatens to collapse Stormont over Northern Ireland protocol

Democratic Unionist Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson is threatening to trigger an election at Stormont within weeks unless there are changes to the Northern Ireland protocol.

At a speech in Belfast, Mr Donaldson said he did not want to collapse the Northern Ireland Assembly but it was not sustainable for his party to remain in the powersharing administration under the current post-Brexit arrangements.

“I’m prepared to go to the country and seek a fresh mandate. That’s democracy,” he said.

“If we can’t get action taken quickly to address the harm, the damage on a daily basis that this protocol is doing to Northern Ireland, then I think the people of Northern Ireland should have a say in this.”

Mr Donaldson warned of a number of imminent measures his party would take in opposition to the protocol as the European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic began a two-day visit to the North.

Solutions were needed to “prevent the situation in Northern Ireland spiralling out of control,” he said, adding that “time is short and consequences will follow”.

“Some of these consequences we will have control of, and some we will not.”

The DUP leader said his party will “immediately withdraw” from the North-South political institutions established under the Belfast Agreement.

Cross-border relations cannot operate in isolation while relations between the North and Britain are being “undermined on a daily basis”, he said.

Mr Donaldson said his party attended the North-South Ministerial Council meeting in July as “an act of good faith and to give some space for issues to be resolved” but that “has not happened”.

While his party will boycott formal North-South relations while the protocol remains in its current format, “important health based matters would continue to be addressed.”

Mr Donaldson said he ordered he pull out “in the full knowledge of the knock on effects of such a move and instability that may result.”

While his party was seeking to block any additional checks on the Irish Sea for goods travelling between Britain and the North, under the Protocol arrangements, the legal advice was that they had “very little room to manoeuvre”.

If DUP ministers can not prevent the checks then their position in the power-sharing Executive “will become untenable”, he said.

“If the choice ultimately is between remaining in office or implementing the protocol in its current form then the only option for any unionist minister would be to cease to hold such office,” the Lagan Valley MP said.

“Within weeks it will become clear of there is a basis for the Executive and Assembly to continue in this current mandate, and I want that to happen.

“But equally we will also need to consider if there is a need for Assembly elections to refresh our mandate if action is not taken to address and resolve the issues related to the protocol and its damaging impact on Northern Ireland each and every day.”

Mr Donaldson said the time frame for resolving issues “is weeks, not months or years”.

“It would be a tragedy if the gains of the last two decades were put at risk and Northern Ireland was plunged back into economic difficulties and political crisis,” he added.

Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie accused Mr Donaldson of making “threats leading to instability and further harming our people here in Northern Ireland”.

“I certainly won’t be asking my party to withdraw from the Executive when we are still dealing with a Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences on a health service which is facing challenges on an unprecedented scale,” he said.

“We simply cannot afford to have the Stormont institutions collapse and people, not least those hundreds of thousands on waiting lists, won’t thank us for it.”

SDLP leader and Foyle MP Colum Eastwood told the BBC the DUP was “playing indulgent games that are more about polls than protocols.”

An opinion poll two weeks ago suggested electoral support for the DUP had slumped to 13 per cent, making it the North’s fourth most popular party, behind Sinn Féin, the UUP and Traditional Unionist Voice.

Mr Sefcovic will meet business and civic leaders and politicians in the North on Thursday, and is due to deliver a speech at Queen’s University, Belfast on UK/EU relations and to meet the North-South Ministerial Council on Friday.

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