Can Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill save Northern Ireland?

The appointment of a new executive by the Northern Ireland Assembly on Saturday was a hugely significant moment. There was no government at Stormont for exactly two years from 3 February 2022 until Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Féin accepted the assembly’s nomination to be first minister at the weekend. She is the first Republican leader of Northern Ireland since the state was created in May 1921, what its inaugural prime minister, Sir James Craig, would describe as ‘a Protestant parliament and a Protestant state’. This was history being made live on television.

For the national and international media, I suspect this will be the end of the story which began with the refusal of the Democratic Unionist Party to participate in the assembly after the 2022 election, at which Sinn Féin had made history by winning most seats. But that is not the story, that is the prologue. For the people of Northern Ireland, the real narrative begins now.