SINN Fein’s leader in Stormont has said political parties in Northern Ireland do not need a “pep talk” from Boris Johnson ahead of a meeting with the Prime Minister.
Johnson will meet Michelle O’Neill, who led her party to its best-ever election result in the local elections earlier this month, and other party leaders in Hillsborough, Co Down on Monday.
O’Neill has said the DUP are “holding society to ransom” by blocking the formation of an executive and assembly in the province in protest over the Northern Ireland protocol.
The DUP say the protocol undermines the province’s status in the Union by effectively creating a border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain while keeping the island’s border porous.
Johnson will meet with the leaders of Northern Irish parties to encourage them to resume the power-sharing agreement which underpins the region’s government.
But Sinn Fein has said the only reason the government has not been formed is the DUP’s intransigence over the protocol.
The party’s president Mary Lou McDonald also hit back over the meeting, telling the BBC: “We’ll be telling him directly that the hold-up in the establishment of the Executive and the Assembly is unacceptable.
“Boris Johnson should know that the other parties, the vast, vast majority of us, don’t need a pep talk about getting back to work or getting back to business in government. It is in fact the DUP that is holding everyone else to ransom and that’s deeply unacceptable.”
She also accused the DUP and the Tories of working in concert to undermine the undermine the protocol.
“We’ll also put it to Boris Johnson that there has been choreography between Downing Street and the DUP in this play of events,” McDonald added.
“We believe strongly that the Prime Minister has given cover to Jeffrey Donaldson and his party and their antics of holding everything back, and we’ll be saying to him very clearly that that needs to stop.”
She said the Prime Minister was “reckless … to pursue again the threat of unilateral action, to break international law and create a full on collision with the European institutions, with the government in Dublin and with the US administration”.
McDonald also accused Johnson of failing to engage with EU proposals to ease the trade barriers which now exist between the rest of the UK and Northern Ireland because of the protocol.
O’Neill, the party’s leader in Belfast, said: “The DUP are holding the rest of society to ransom because of their actions, because they delivered us the hardest possible Brexit, so I think Boris Johnson, perhaps, is speaking out of two sides of his mouth – on one hand he is saying he wants politics to work, he wants the Executive to be formed, at the same time he is feeding the instability and economic uncertainty with his threats to go around the protocol.”
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said he wanted the border on the Irish Sea removed and wanted action not words from the Prime Minister.
He said: “I want his words translated into clear action.
“I will judge what the Government does and I will look at the credibility of what that is and the impact it has in terms of removing that Irish Sea border.
“I will make my judgments based on what has happened, I am not going to speculate at this stage.
“I haven’t seen the Government’s proposals, so I’m not in a position to say I would do A or B, but you will note that in the past we have been reasonable, we have taken proportionate action, we have sought to give time for negotiations, to bring forward outcomes. That hasn’t happened and I think the time has come now for action.”
Sinn Fein became Northern Ireland’s largest party for the first time in the province’s history.
The government in Stormont remains paralysed while the DUP block the formation of both a parliament and assembly in protest over the protocol.
