The return of power-sharing in Northern Ireland is not a done deal

Is power-sharing about to finally return to Northern Ireland? That’s the expectation in Westminster and Stormont after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) endorsed a new deal with the UK government.

On Monday evening, the DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson held a tense five-hour meeting with his party’s executive. In a sign of the high stakes nature of the discussion, one DUP executive member has been accused of wearing a wire – so Donaldson’s speech could be leaked to a loyalist activist who shared the details in real time on social media. But despite the commotion, the DUP leader emerged in the early hours of Tuesday morning to declare that after two years of deadlock, he was pleased to report that the ‘party executive has now endorsed the proposals that I have put to the party’.

What are these proposals? The deal has not been released publicly, with several Tory backbenchers complaining that they are yet to see the fine print.