Editorial: If the government shares unionist concerns over the Northern Ireland Protocol it should bring in temporary direct rule

​The government yesterday extended the period that there can be before calling another assembly election.

The DUP has borne all the criticism for this (criticism that was almost wholly absent when Sinn Fein kept Stormont in suspension for three full years until it got its long-cherished sectarian demand for an Irish language act).

It would be easy therefore to forget why the DUP has taken the action that it has done. The party has been making criticisms of the Northern Ireland Protocol that the UK government itself has been making, albeit intermittently, since 2021.

The government has agreed that the Irish Sea border has done grave damage to the Belfast Agreement. It has said that hindrance to fundamental internal goods movements within the UK is intolerable. The government has said that it is unacceptable that there is diversion of trade. And so on.

It is true that the government’s emphasis on these shortcomings has waxed and waned. But now the highest court in the land has endorsed the unionist analysis of the protocol.

What then are the options? One option is a resumption of devolution at Stormont as if nothing had happened. Another is an election, which the government increasingly seems to accept would solve nothing. A further solution is direct rule. But the Irish government has said this cannot happen without increased Dublin say.

It is lamentable that the UK, while it has ruled out joint authority, has not stamped on this suggestion that undiluted direct rule cannot return. London could make it happen for a limited period of time until the protocol is overhauled in the way the government itself has in the recent past wanted to see.