It is a question all good cardiologists must ask themselves every day: when do you stop trying to resuscitate the patient on the operating table? The same question could be asked of Stormont, Northern Ireland’s ever crisis ridden legislature: when do we stop bothering?
In the latest round of life-saving treatment, His Majesty the King, Rishi Sunak and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen assembled at Windsor to proclaim a new dawn and the remaking of the Northern Ireland Protocol. And, hopefully, another end to the latest Stormont boycott.
The deal unveiled this week will, we’re told, ensure the uninterrupted flow of Scottish seed potatoes and Asda sausages to Ulster. But it doesn’t address the far more fundamental existential question. Is Stormont, supposedly the linchpin of the Good Friday Agreement, anything more than a vanity talking shop?
Stormont’s primary function is to carve up the largesse handed over by the English authorities
For a third of its so-called existence, since its inception in 1999, Stormont has been wilfully suspended by its main participants, David Trimble’s Unionists, the DUP or Sinn Fein, with either side bringing the house down for their own aims.
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