Editorial: Funding, strike and timeline pressure is put on the DUP

​The pressure on the DUP to return to Stormont gets ever greater.

The government has delayed the date by which an assembly election must be called until February 8.

Meanwhile, the trade unions Unite, GMB and Siptu have said that the first of four new transport strikes will take place next week.

The unions have said that it is a “further escalation in the industrial action” to get “Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris release funding” for transport and pay rises.

But Mr Heaton-Harris has in turn said that the funding required for such increases is dependent on Stormont’s return.

See the logic? DUP is to blame for taking a stand against what the distinguished economist Dr Graham Gudgin rightly described on these pages as the “constitutional outrage” of the Northern Ireland Protocol as amended by the Windsor Framework. The unions themselves have been careful not to blame the DUP but that will come to that party if powersharing stays down.

A Conservative and Unionist Party was as of last night in fresh internal division over how run the UK, making it all the more likely that it will out of power within a year. It has presided over another outrage, that of the lose-lose option for unionists: either stomach an increased Irish role in the province or accept the major internal UK barrier and the dominance of EU law over swathes of our economy, including regulations that do not just affect movement of goods but, as for example just emerged, will prohibit silver dental fillings in NI.

How right the DUP has been to resist this.

Meanwhile, the strikes have shown how unfit many Stormont MLAs are to wield power. It does not occur to them that unanimously supporting all striking pay demands might just lead to fresh demands after the current ones have been granted.