N. Irish elections loom after failure to resolve post-Brexit impasse
Northern Ireland has been without a functioning government since FebruaryNorthern Ireland's feuding political parties failed on Thursday to agree to restart power-sharing, paving the way for a second election this year amid an entrenched political stalemate over contentious post-Brexit trade rules.
"We need to remove the rubble of the protocol that has undermined our economy, that has inhibited our ability to trade within our own country," he said ahead of the failed vote. "While this assembly sat mothballed and silent people's homes have got colder, their trust in politics has fallen even further and their lives have gotten harder," he said.New British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's had implored the parties to"get back to Stormont", arguing people there"deserve a fully functioning and locally elected executive", his official spokesman said.
"If the executive is not formed by 28 October, I will call an election," the minister had said in a statement."Time is running out." It claims the pact, which effectively keeps Northern Ireland in the European Union's single market and customs union, weakens the province's place within the United Kingdom.
Eliminating that hard border was a key strand of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.