2023 has been a strange, manic, uplifting and disheartening year, and there's no reason to think 2024 will be any different in tenor, so I've looked back and forward
Yes it is: and their stated price is the scrapping of anything which even resembles the NI Protocol (of which the Windsor Framework is obviously a refinement). But London needs to take the initiative, and either try at least to identify what the actual, as opposed to stated, price of DUP participation would be, and then judge whether or not it is payable; or else expose the DUP as no-cost-too-high obstructionists, with the consequences that flow from that. Without changing the institutions (to which I’m sympathetic), the political process can’t work around the DUP. And it doesn’t seem the act of a responsible Westminster government to shrug and just wait to see what happens.
Eliot, thanks for that clarification. Your original wording implied that the DUP were in some way being excluded from devolved government. London has gone quite some distance to meet the DUP's demands with the Windsor Protocol but they cannot give them everything they want because they are constrained by the Withdrawal Agreement, a treaty binding in international law which they themselves (the UK government) agreed to and was ratified by the UK parliament. Also, the state of Northern Ireland politics appears to be that there is no political cost for "no-cost-too-high obstructionists". The DUP gained seats in the local elections last year, held after the Windsor Protocol was announced.
"I urged the prime minister to try to find a way to allow the Democratic Unionist Party to participate in devolved government at Stormont."
Eliot, it is the DUP who have refused to take up the seats which are waiting for them in the Northern Ireland Executive, and have even refused to allow the election of a Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Yes it is: and their stated price is the scrapping of anything which even resembles the NI Protocol (of which the Windsor Framework is obviously a refinement). But London needs to take the initiative, and either try at least to identify what the actual, as opposed to stated, price of DUP participation would be, and then judge whether or not it is payable; or else expose the DUP as no-cost-too-high obstructionists, with the consequences that flow from that. Without changing the institutions (to which I’m sympathetic), the political process can’t work around the DUP. And it doesn’t seem the act of a responsible Westminster government to shrug and just wait to see what happens.
Eliot, thanks for that clarification. Your original wording implied that the DUP were in some way being excluded from devolved government. London has gone quite some distance to meet the DUP's demands with the Windsor Protocol but they cannot give them everything they want because they are constrained by the Withdrawal Agreement, a treaty binding in international law which they themselves (the UK government) agreed to and was ratified by the UK parliament. Also, the state of Northern Ireland politics appears to be that there is no political cost for "no-cost-too-high obstructionists". The DUP gained seats in the local elections last year, held after the Windsor Protocol was announced.
"I urged the prime minister to try to find a way to allow the Democratic Unionist Party to participate in devolved government at Stormont."
Eliot, it is the DUP who have refused to take up the seats which are waiting for them in the Northern Ireland Executive, and have even refused to allow the election of a Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly.