Upheaval in Northern Ireland, With Brexit at Its Center

[Celerity]

A dispute over trading checks has left the main pro-British party in disarray, creating the potential for a momentous political shift.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/10/world/europe/northern-ireland-brexit.html


A pro-British mural in Belfast. Some unionists say Brexit arrangements have driven a wedge between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Michelle O’Neill was forced to greet visitors this week in a drab upstairs meeting room at the rear of the Stormont Parliament Buildings in Belfast, its faded posters and scattered chairs a stark contrast to the classical grandeur of the chambers at the front of the complex.

A leader of the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party, Ms. O’Neill had just vacated her office as deputy first minister of Northern Ireland’s government after the first minister, Paul Givan, a member of the main unionist party — that is, the main party supporting Northern Ireland’s current status as part of the United Kingdom — abruptly resigned. Under the power-sharing agreement that governs the territory, she automatically lost her post as well.

But if the upheaval turned Ms. O’Neill into a temporary vagabond, it also served to underline a momentous political shift in Northern Ireland: Assuming that current polls hold, Sinn Fein, with its vestigial ties to the paramilitary Irish Republican Army and fervent commitment to Irish unification, will become the largest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly after elections scheduled for May. That could catapult the 45-year-old Ms. O’Neill into the post of first minister, and it helps explain why Mr. Givan quit when he did.

His Democratic Unionist Party is desperate to rally its voters before the election. Its most emotive issue is the North’s trade status in the wake of Brexit, which is governed by a complex legal arrangement known as the Northern Ireland Protocol. Unionists complain that the protocol, which requires border checks on goods passing between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain, has driven a wedge between the North and the rest of the United Kingdom.

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