DUP say Alliance want to abandon consensus politics 'when it comes to excluding unionists'

The DUP has slammed a proposal by the Alliance Party to allow the institutions to move on without the main unionist party if Stormont isn’t restored by mid-January.
By David Thompson
Published 5th Jan 2024, 16:41 BST
Alliance have once again raised reform of the institutions. They want to stop any one party being able to bring down the Assembly and Executive. MLAs are pictured here at the first sitting of the current mandate. Photo: Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.Alliance have once again raised reform of the institutions. They want to stop any one party being able to bring down the Assembly and Executive. MLAs are pictured here at the first sitting of the current mandate. Photo: Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.
Alliance have once again raised reform of the institutions. They want to stop any one party being able to bring down the Assembly and Executive. MLAs are pictured here at the first sitting of the current mandate. Photo: Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry had called for the Secretary of State to reform Stormont to allow other parties to form an Executive without the DUP.

The North Down MP said his party had already proposed that the third largest party could take the deputy first minister role if either Sinn Fein or the DUP didn’t. Currently that would be the Alliance Party.

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The DUP responded saying that the Alliance Party wants to abandon consensus politics when it comes to excluding unionists.

Yesterday, Mr Farry told the BBC that there was clearly a problem with Stormont’s structures, adding: “There are different ways in which you can do power-sharing. It’s important to stress that we are talking about continuing power-sharing and preserving the principles of the Good Friday Agreement but learning the lessons of what’s happened in the past”.

Asked by the BBC’s Joel Taggart if Alliance were calling for the Secretary of State to do the same during the Sinn Fein boycott, Mr Farry said: “Absolutely. We welcome people to go back and look through our manifestos and look through comments that have been made by many Alliance figures”.

He added: “We have been calling for a voluntary coalition approach to power-sharing since the late 1990s. We supported the Good Friday Agreement but we always understood there were different ways of constructing how you form an Executive”. He said the DUP and TUV have championed different approaches in the past, but oppose reform now because it “suits their agenda”.

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DUP East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell said Alliance “settled for a bad deal and were quite content to ‘rigorously implement’ the NI Protocol even though not one unionist MLA backed it”.

He added that NI “only makes progress when unionists and nationalists are on board. Whilst the Alliance Party dismiss unionist concerns, they should at least be honest with the electorate because no one can recall the Alliance Party calling for an Executive to be formed without nationalists when SF walked out in their failed attempt to break Unionist resolve.”

Related topics:Stephen FarryDUPBBCGregory CampbellNI Protocol

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