Editorial: As Stormont return seems to get closer, transparency about the deal will be crucial

​We have been here before. There have been multiple predictions of an imminent return in recent months.

But there have also been predictions that it will not return before the UK general election later this year, and perhaps never.

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, is now explicit that he wants to return. Some senior members of his party seem determined for the DUP to stay out of Stormont.

That a meeting of the party executive has been called is an intriguing development. It is a larger group in the party than the 12 party officers, who have reportedly been narrowly divided on a restoration of the assembly. If Sir Jeffrey gets positive feedback at the executive on Monday, a return is all but certain.

Now more than ever it is important that there is transparency as to the nature of the deal on offer, and honesty about its limitations. Both the DUP leadership and people close to government get sensitive when it is pointed out that the fundamentals will remain unchanged.

We now that because both the EU and the UK itself have made clear that the Windsor Framework is not up for negotiation.

But there might be surprising and welcome developments within that grim, grim overall context of a modified Northern Ireland Protocol – which has been a grievous, indeed unforgivable, setback for the province and its place within the United Kingdom.

There is another thing that is important in the coming days and months: that a huge financial settlement is not used as cover for this constitutional abomination of a major internal UK trade barrier caused by NI alone being, to all intents and purposes, in the EU single market.