Morning View: Only Government to blame for a December poll

The Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, has confirmed that there will be a December election if no executive is formed at Stormont. This gambit is intended to turn up the pressure on the DUP, which has refused to play a role in power-sharing because of the Northern Ireland protocol.

This is an impasse of the government’s own making. It agreed to place the border down the Irish Sea that caused the institutions to collapse. It defended its actions through the courts, when the protocol was challenged legally by a cross-party group of unionists. And it forced ministers to erect border posts dividing up their own country.

There could hardly be a greater contrast to the situation in the run-up to 2020, when ministers did everything possible to ameliorate Sinn Fein, before eventually caving in to its demands for an Irish language act as part of the New Decade, New Approach deal. It’s easy to forget, but republicans supposedly collapsed the executive due to RHI, before settling into their default mode of making demands and having them satisfied. The then Northern Ireland secretary, Julian Smith, even chastised the DUP, rather than condemning Sinn Fein for that situation.

The government subsequently capitulated to the republican idea that there could be ‘no border’ on the island of Ireland, where one officially exists. In deference to Irish nationalists, and their barely veiled threats of violence, it ripped apart its own country with a trade and political border.

The response from Northern Irish unionists, if anything, has been mild and proportionate. Now Heaton-Harris, who like so many other supposedly unionist Conservatives trooped through the lobby to vote for the protocol, is trying to browbeat the DUP with the threat of an election.

He should take no pride at all in his actions.