Letters: Stormont is a dead parrot, ‘bereft of life’

After the British foreign secretary James Cleverly attempted to breathe life into Stormont, he could do worse than to watch Monty Python's “Dead Parrot” sketch.

Much like Monty Python's parrot he would discover that Stormont “is a stiff”, it is “bereft of life”, and if the British government, the Irish government, the European Union and Irish America hadn't nailed it to a perch, it would be “pushing up the daisies”.

I believe that devolution in Northern Ireland has failed because the political common ground of all parties working together for the building of a democratic, civil, peaceful and prosperous Northern Ireland doesn't exist. That was the promise of the 1998 Belfast Agreement and it is a promise that has been consistently broken by Stormont parties over a period of 25 years.

Until such times that political unionism and nationalism can commit to building a democratic, civil, peaceful and prosperous Northern Ireland, James Cleverly should put his energies into putting in place a sustained period of direct rule governance rather than trying to breathe life into a “dead parrot”.

Gerry Cullen, Dungannon