Boris Johnson holds talks with Irish political leaders in effort to get Northern Ireland Assembly ‘up and running’

Boris Johnson met political leaders in Northern Ireland today as he sought to get its assembly “up and running” to break one of the Brexit deadlocks.

The Prime Minister held talks with Sinn Fein and other parties at Stormont House, after a dinner with Democratic Unionist Party leaders outside Belfast last night.

Getting the Northern Ireland Assembly restored is key to the Government’s Brexit plans as otherwise some form of Direct Rule may have to be brought back if the UK leaves the EU with No Deal.

Civil servants are not believed to have sufficient powers to deal with some of the problems which could arise if there is a crash-out from the EU.

Before the talks, Mr Johnson said: “Clearly the people in Northern Ireland have been without a government, without Stormont, for two years and six months, so my prime focus this morning is to do everything I can to help that get up and running again.

“That’s profoundly in the interests of people here, of all the citizens here in Northern Ireland.”

He rejected claims, fuelled by the dinner with DUP, that the Government is unable to act as an impartial mediator in talks to restore the crisis-hit institutions due to the deal with Arlene Foster’s party which is keeping the Conservatives in power at Westminster.

“It’s all there in the Good Friday Agreement, we believe in complete impartiality and that’s what we are going to observe,” he said.

Northern Ireland has been without a devolved government since early 2017, with hamstrung civil servants currently running under-pressure public services.

Stormont’s two main parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein, remain at loggerheads over a series of long-standing disputes, with a series of talks initiatives aimed at securing a resolution having ended in failure.

The dinner last night was attended by Ms Foster, deputy leader Nigel Dodds and party chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson who this morning put the likelihood of a No Deal at “significant”.

Asked about warnings of 40,000 job losses in Northern Ireland, he said that was at the “very high end of the scale” and he was not convinced a no deal would result in that type of outcome.

He told the BBC’s Today programme: “We do recognise that no deal is not good in the short term for our economy in Northern Ireland and to be clear it’s not something we’re working towards.” 

He backed Mr Johnson’s “tough line” with Brussels that the Withdrawal Agreement had to be re-opened and the current Northern Ireland border “backstop” axed.

On proposals for a time limit or a unilateral escape mechanism from the backstop, which previously the DUP has signalled it might have supported, he added: “Perhaps the moment has passed for that.”

He also rejected warnings that Brexit could fuel the campaign for a united Ireland.

But Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald branded Brexit a “piece of astonishing political and economic self-harm” and argued that it had “changed the entire political dynamic”.

“I can say this without fear of contradiction that, for everybody across society, Brexit has raised fundamental questions around the wisdom and the sustainability of the partition of our island which we’ve lived with now since the 1920s.

“It’s changed the entire political dynamic, it’s changed the parameters of the conversation and it’s changed minds.”

The DUP’s 10 MPs have propped up the minority Government since the 2017 general election, an arrangement that committed a £1 billion boost in public spending in Northern Ireland

The last DUP/Sinn Fein-led powersharing coalition imploded in January 2017 when the late Martin McGuinness quit as Sinn Fein deputy first minister amid a row about a botched green energy scheme.

The fallout over the Renewable Heat Incentive was soon overtaken by disputes over the Irish language, same-sex marriage and the toxic legacy of the Troubles.

* Workers from the under-threat Harland and Wolff shipyard, which build the Titanic, went to Stormont, demanding a meeting with the Prime Minister.

With the famous Belfast yard days from falling into administration, they are calling for Government intervention, including potential nationalisation.