There is no need for a Stormont ‘deal’. An election is preferable

It takes some nerve to make such a claim when you have held down devolution for three years, until your list of non negotiable demands is met.

The DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson is right to caution against a ‘quick fix’ return to power sharing.

But there is a much deeper concern than the swift nature of any hurried return to Stormont. It is this: why must there be a deal? Why can Stormont not just be reinstated?

If that is not possible because one party, Sinn Fein, says so then the solution ought to be simple. That the process is changed in only one respect: that no political party can be such a blockage, and in meantime power sharing returns. We need to break the pattern of crisis then deal, crisis then deal.

As Jim Allister explains opposite (see link below), and as numerous voices on these pages have explained, there are huge potential ramifications from a powerful Irish language commissioner.

Any accompanying commissioner for Ulster Scots or, even, as has bizarrely been mooted, for Britishness, will not counteract the influence of an Irish language commissioner.

Even if the latter was in fact a harmless post, then the DUP (if indeed it is about to agree such, but perhaps it has no intention of doing so) ought to be explaining to voters the proposal, explaining why it is harmless and let unionists make a decision on it. After all, if there is no possibility of any major political development being imposed on nationalists against their will, then the same must apply across the board.

The Ulster Unionist Party is continuing to make clear that it opposes an Irish language act and the Stormont House legacy proposals. It is to be applauded on its consistent opposition to these developments, as is the TUV.

The whole process is broken. The UK government has made clear that it will not stand up to republicans.

Unless non negotiable demands have been dropped, an election in the spring now looks the least bad way forward.

• Jim Allister: An Irish language zealot will oversee an act