The paramilitary groups were hours away from carrying out the plot to target the Irish government before they were pulled over by their commanders, it was reported on Monday. The attack was called off after the UK ruled out joint administration of Northern Ireland by London and Dublin if Stormont could not be restored. The DUP has refused to return to power-sharing until the Northern Ireland Protocol, which created the Irish Sea border, is removed or replaced. Instead of returning to direct rule from Westminster, Sinn Féin called for “joint rule” and for the Irish government to be more involved in Northern Ireland affairs. This angered loyalist groups such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defense Association (UDA), the Belfast Telegraph reported, as well as mainstream trade unionists. The UVF and UDA are reviewing their 1994 truces amid heightened tensions over the Irish Sea border treaty, which is meant to preserve the Good Friday Agreement.
“Everybody’s a Hawk Now”
Loyalist leaders met in Co Antrim last week, according to the paper, which said those present were “angry and combative”. A source at the meeting said: “There were no hawks and doves, everyone is a hawk now.” In June, the UVF staged an elaborate bomb hoax to disrupt a speech by Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign secretary, in Belfast. The Loyal Communities Council wrote to all unionist parties last week demanding that no Irish government officials visit Northern Ireland while the Protocol remains in place. The DUP left Stormont in February. She refused to drop her boycott after May’s election, which she lost to Sinn Féin for the first time. Northern Ireland now faces a second election in less than a year in December, after a six-month deadline to reform the executive expired on Friday. Fresh elections are unlikely to break the Stormont standoff because the DUP is almost certain to retain its status as the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland. That means he will be able to continue the power-sharing boycott, which combines the biggest union and nationalist parties in a binding coalition, after the new vote. Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Stormont has been unable to function for around 40 per cent of the time because one side or the other has left. Michel Martin, the Irish prime minister, said the political deadlock in Northern Ireland showed the region’s system of government was now ripe for reform over the next five years.
“The system is not fit for purpose”
“The system is polarizing and not fit for purpose,” he told the Financial Times. The recent electoral success of the centrist Alliance Party, which does not identify as unionist or nationalist but is excluded from government decisions, showed that change was needed, he said. Some Brexit campaigners said the comments were evidence that international agreements, such as the Protocol, could and should be renegotiated. Chris Heaton-Harris, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, urged the DUP to return to Stormont so the Assembly could tackle NHS waiting lists and the cost of living crisis. He has said he will trigger new elections but has yet to give a date, which has led to accusations of flip-flopping. He is meeting Northern Ireland’s political leaders for talks on Tuesday and Mr Coveney later in the week. UK-EU talks on cutting border controls on British goods entering Northern Ireland are continuing and there are hopes of an agreement before April’s 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
