Crisis talks to restore power-sharing have become a pre-Christmas tradition in Northern Ireland. This year, the political parties had one weekend to digest the general election results before the Northern Ireland secretary, Julian Smith, convened new negotiations.
The province’s devolved assembly and executive have not functioned since January 2017, when Sinn Féin collapsed the institutions at Stormont. That decision was supposedly taken as a protest against Arlene Foster’s refusal to step down as first minister while her role in the failure of a renewable heating scheme was investigated. Subsequently, the RHI scandal was scarcely mentioned, as republicans issued a series of “red line” demands they insisted must be met if they were to share power in Northern Ireland.
