Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris confirms he will not be immediately calling a Stormont election when the latest power-sharing deadline passes at midnight
In a post on Twitter, he wrote:"If no Executive is formed today, I'll be under a legal duty to hold elections to the Assembly in the next 12 weeks.
With the DUP still refusing to end its Stormont boycott, Mr Heaton-Harris will today confirm that, as it stands, an election must be held no later than 13 April, but he will not name a date. This time there has been no such drama and no talk of ultimatums. Mr Heaton-Harris, who will attend a meeting of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference in Dublin today, has indicated that he will take his time.
It was a compromise to prevent a hard border with checks on goods crossing from Northern Ireland into the Republic of Ireland and the EU's Single Market.But the British government accepted that it would stay aligned with the EU’s Single Market rules for goods. The current legal deadline of 13 April falls just three days after the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
Speaking in Washington yesterday, UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said the protocol negotiations are not aimed at meeting any particular deadline such as the anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
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