Rishi Sunak set the seal on a historic shift in Northern Ireland on Monday as he shook hands with nationalist First Minister Michelle O’Neill at Stormont Castle.
The province’s Assembly got back to business this weekend after the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) ended a two-year boycott in return for renewed Government promises over post-Brexit trade and a £3.3 billion budget sweetener.
Mr Sunak met Ms O’Neill and the DUP deputy first minister, Emma Little-Pengelly at the nearby castle after touring the Assembly buildings - erected nearly a century ago as a highly visible stamp of unionist authority.
Election victory in 2022 for Ms O’Neill’s Sinn Fein party underscored long-term demographic trends away from hardline unionist dominance, and Stormont’s return fuelled the party’s call for preparations to start on a border reunification poll.
But Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris pushed back at Ms O’Neill’s suggestion that a border poll could come in the next decade.
“I really don’t think that’s going to happen but as Secretary of State I am the person responsible in Government to judge whether the conditions for that have been met,” he told LBC.
“They’re definitely not met at this point in time, and I would suggest that actually top of the in-tray for an incoming Executive has to be things like public-sector pay, the health service, which needs massive transformation out here, funding on education and a whole host of other things that actually all people in Northern Ireland from both communities truly care about.”
The 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement gave the UK Government large latitude over deciding when the conditions would be right for a reunification referendum, and Mr Heaton-Harris said he was not yet “confident” that enough people in Northern Ireland wanted one.
But Sinn Fein is also eyeing power south of the border when the Republic holds elections next year, and Ms O’Neill said yesterday: “I believe we are in a decade of opportunity and there are so many things that are changing.
“All the old norms, the nature of this (Stormont) estate, the fact that a nationalist/republican was never supposed to be First Minister.”
However, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson criticised the Sinn Fein vice president for focusing on the “divisive” issue.
“She says she wants to be a First Minister for all, well that means the unionist community,” he told Sky News this morning. “Let’s move forward together. Let’s focus on the issues that really matter to people. They’re not interested in a divisive border poll.”
Asked how much of Northern Ireland’s recent troubles was down to Brexit, Mr Heaton-Harris conceded that not enough attention had been paid to the constitutional conundrums thrown up when an EU border was suddenly placed on the island of Ireland.
“To be quite candid, I don't think people paid enough attention to it in that debate,” he said.
“I was a Brexiteer. I think I was only asked about it twice in all the times I was going round. And so it was a conundrum that needed to be fixed.”
But the minister pointed to Mr Sunak’s breakthroughs in negotiating the Windsor Framework with Brussels and now with enticing the DUP back into government.
“We've got Stormont up and running. It should deliver actually a brighter future for everybody here, and nobody wants to go back to square one on this.”
Mr Heaton-Harris meanwhile insisted the £3.3 billion was “ample” for the Northern Ireland Executive to “get on with the job”.
But Ms Little-Pengelly said Stormont ministers would be “speaking with one voice” in pressing Mr Sunak today to deliver long-term funding stability for embattled public services.
