It is an unworkable system of government because it is based not, as coalition anywhere else, on an agreed platform but on mutually exclusive agendas and mutual vetoes. Thus deadlock, particularly where one party has a vested interest in ensuring Northern Ireland as a British entity is ungovernable, is inevitable.

Mandatory coalition has been tried for 10 years and has spectacularly failed every time. We can't afford to go on headbanging against this wall upon which Sinn Fein has plainly written 'IRA Rule OK'.
It is time for the DUP to face reality.

They've tried what the government wanted, it doesn't work. Now is the time to unitedly go to government and tell them straight "mandatory coalition is over, finished, failed. If devolution is to return, it can only be on the basis of voluntary coalition and then those genuinely interested in good government for Northern Ireland can move ahead, leaving the Sinn Fein wreckers behind."

Now is the time for Peter Robinson to act. It's either that or bend over so far backwards to appease the unappeaseable, as to be walked all over by a Sinn Fein that never had any intention of bringing stability and good government to this province of the UK.

Jim Allister
Traditional Unionist MEP