When people start asking if Stormont is going to come down, something is up.
This hitherto-dormant question has been reawakened in the North in recent weeks. It shows a concern born out of bitter experience: in the last 10 years Northern Ireland has been without a devolved government for five of them.
Hence, when Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy warned powersharing was in a “precarious place” and there was “a danger that the wheels could come off” if the Stormont institutions were not reformed, that was interpreted in some quarters as a warning – or indeed a threat – that it was preparing to collapse Stormont.
Unsurprisingly, Murphy blamed the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) for “frustrating” delivery; that party’s leader, Gavin Robinson, equally unsurprisingly, hit back, saying if Murphy was “worried about his wheels coming off he should tighten his nuts” and saying the DUP was “committed” to the institutions and “delivering”.
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Business as usual: Sinn Féin blames the DUP for “blocking” legislation by abusing a veto mechanism and, in turn, the latter blames the former for “over-commitments” to projects such the A5 road upgrade.
[ Government must stop enabling Sinn Féin’s threats to Stormont ]
Such is the instability of powersharing; all it takes is for one to walk away, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
Yet to do so now would serve neither party, as those recent suspensions, triggered by a Sinn Féin walkout in 2017 and the DUP in 2022, show. “There isn’t any clear evidence that parties benefit,” Jon Tonge, professor of politics at Liverpool University, says.
Sinn Féin is the largest party in the assembly and holds the post of First Minister. All it needs to do is hold its course and – barring any unforeseen disasters – it will retain both these positions in the election expected in May next year, not least given the challenges facing the DUP amid the fragmentation of the unionist vote and the fallout following the conviction of its former leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, for child sex-abuse offences.
With a little over six months until the Assembly is dissolved for the election anyway, as it stands Sinn Féin has nothing to gain from a collapse and has potentially much to lose.
Hence the clarification by senior figures, including First Minister Michelle O’Neill, who told reporters last Wednesday: “I have no intention of bringing Stormont down.”
Nationalist commentator Chris Donnelly says: “I don’t see Stormont falling this side of an election, unless it’s an unintended consequence … and it just escalates.”
So, Stormont stands – for the meantime, anyway – but in this renewed spotlight, what has been illuminated is that it is not working.
Tonge reads Murphy’s comments as “explaining to their own supporters why so little has been achieved”. Call it underlying tensions, a spat or the usual Assembly blame game, “what’s always behind it is frustration that nothing is getting done of note, but that’s true of any consociational powersharing system in the world”, he says. Consociational is a term used to describe government being run by, for example, different ethnic or religious groups together.
In the more than four years since the last Assembly election in 2022, Stormont has passed only 16 pieces of legislation.
Northern Ireland is mired in financial crisis, the Executive is limping along without a budget and the only solution is to ask the UK government for more money. “Stormont is a mess, to be blunt,” Donnelly says.
Little wonder that the public in Northern Ireland has switched off from Stormont. Research by Liverpool University in 2024 showed only just over a quarter of people were satisfied with the performance of the Assembly or Executive; only 19 per cent were confident it would not collapse again.
But most still believe in powersharing. The research showed 83 per cent believed it remained the best basis for governing Northern Ireland, but 57 per cent felt it required changes.
What Sinn Féin understands – and what Murphy’s comment reflects – is that the momentum is not towards collapse, but reform.
Alliance and the Social Democratic and Labour Party have long been advocates, with Sinn Féin a more recent convert. Ulster Unionist Party leader Jon Burrows is “open” to reform. The DUP’s Robinson has emphasised the need for a change in culture over institutional reform.
As the Northern Ireland think tank Pivotal said in June, “there is agreement that government is not delivering, but not about what to do about it” or “how or when discussions about reforms will be taken forward”.
Donnelly says: “I think [Murphy] was in a cryptic way saying, ‘We think there’s trouble coming’. I think he’s right, but I just don’t think it’ll translate itself into trouble this side of the election.”
The Stormont institutions – and the Belfast Agreement that created them, guaranteed by the Irish and British governments – are approaching their 30th anniversary. The lesson of history is that change in Northern Ireland tends to come from without and tends to come when Dublin and London are on the same page.
In Belfast on August 6th, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said the two governments “have to work together to bring forward” the necessary legislation to reform the institutions.
He has pledged to raise it with his counterpart Andy Burnham, a committed devolutionist who is due to make his first official visit to the North this month.
Stormont may stay up, but it cannot stay the same.
