Daily Times

The UK government on Tuesday issued its strongest appeal yet to unionists in Northern Ireland to restore the region’s power-sharing government, after Brexit disrupted a delicate political balance. The Conservative government called on the pro-UK Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to embrace “real leadership” and emulate predecessors who forged Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord, which ended three decades of violence against British rule. The DUP has been boycotting the divided territory’s government at Stormont over post-Brexit trading arrangements agreed with the European Union, despite itself supporting the UK’s split from the EU. The party has been under sustained pressure from London, Dublin, Brussels and Washington, peaking in a visit to the island last week by US President Joe Biden. Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris delivered the UK government’s sharpest rhetoric yet, in a speech to a conference marking the 25th anniversary of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday peace agreement. Everyone in Northern Ireland wants better public services, economic prosperity and a brighter future for their children, the minister told the audience at Queen’s University in Belfast. “The biggest threat to Northern Ireland’s place in the (UK) union is failing to deliver on these priorities,” he said. “Others who share that (pro-UK) view should put the union first, restore the devolved institutions and get on with the job of delivering for the people of Northern Ireland.”