Statement by TUV leader Jim Allister:-
“Instead of calls to restart the pantomime season at Stormont it would be more in the public interest if politicians faced the reality that this Stormont will never work. The reason is simple – Sinn Fein is not in Stormont to make Northern Ireland work, quite the opposite. So, a system dependent on them at the heart of government will never work.
“We need government. If, as is obvious, we can’t get it from failed Stormont, then, it must be provided from Westminster. Turning the key on Stormont may be painful for its payroll hangers-on but, frankly, I’m not sure the public will really notice. Has anyone really missed it over the last six months?
“A far greater danger is that the payroll interests within the DUP, in desperation to hang on, pay Sinn Fein’s dangerous and destructive price in order to buy another phase, in Arlene Foster’s language, of ‘crocodile-feeding’ – of which the key demand is driving unionists from the public service through an Irish Language Act.
“An Irish Language Act, whether free-standing or cloaked in a ‘Culture Act’, must be an immutable red line for any unionist opposed to the stripping out of Northern Ireland’s Britishness.”