Sunak praises Good Friday – but DUP won’t budge

Rishi Sunak lavished praise on the architects of the Good Friday Agreement at an anniversary event today, as he joined a star-studded cast of political heavyweights in piling the pressure on the Democratic Unionist Party to return to power-sharing in Stormont.

The PM told delegates at Queen’s University Belfast conference that it had been the qualities of “courage, imagination, and perseverance” which “brought an imperfect but enduring peace to a place taught to believe no such peace was possible.”

Sunak was whisked off to Belfast after PMQs this afternoon to close the three-day conference and host a gala dinner to mark 25 years since the signing of the agreement, designed to bring 30 years of violent conflict in Northern Ireland to an end.

Over the past few days, Belfast has played host to Bill and Hillary Clinton, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Ireland’s leader Leo Varadkar, and a string of former British prime ministers, who have paid tribute to those involved in the historic deal, and issued warnings of what could yet go wrong.

It’s not the anniversary celebration Sunak would have wanted. Hanging over the occasion is the DUP’s refusal to endorse the “Windsor Framework” Brexit deal the PM signed with Brussels. Sunak had hoped the deal would draw a line under the turmoil of the last seven years. Instead, the DUP’s failure to play ball is undermining the Good Friday Agreement’s main goal – to unite Republicans and Unionists and bring stable governance to Northern Ireland.

Since the Good Friday Agreement was signed a quarter of a century ago, the DUP has been in a fraught, on-off coalition with the republican party Sinn Fein. Power-sharing again collapsed 14 months ago when the DUP withdrew over post-Brexit trade rules for the region.

An imminent change of heart doesn’t look likely. The row that’s erupted between Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland Secretary, and Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, is a sign of how hostile the mood has become. In his speech to the conference yesterday, Heaton-Harris urged the party to follow its founder Ian Paisley’s example, and have the “courage” to return to Stormont. Donaldson shot back that his party would not be “brow beaten” over its concerns about the Windsor Framework. “The great and the good can lecture us all they want for a cheap round of applause but it won’t change the political reality,” he said.

None of the high-profile dignitaries taking part in this week’s talks mentioned the DUP by name. But the message was clear: continued peace is contingent on the unionists relenting.

One of the most powerful addresses came from George Mitchell, the former US Senate majority leader who presided over the Good Friday negotiations and steered them to a successful conclusion. He warned of the “100 percenters” in all parties who “want everything their way, all the time. To them, any compromise is weakness. But I say to you that reasoned, principled compromise is essential, especially in divided societies.”

Mitchell wasn’t alone in making a sound emotional and intellectual case for keeping a fractious, pragmatic fudge ticking over in Northern Ireland. Whether the DUP listens is another question. 

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life