WHEN Sinn Féin recently branded the DUP as having a “wreckers’ agenda” in the Executive, the party appeared to be finally accepting what this column has been suggesting for some time – Stormont is not working.

The solution for Sinn Féin would appear to be either to reform it, or abandon it.

However, the party has not indicated support for Stormont’s reform.

Instead, it has stated that since the Good Friday Agreement was a peace settlement, but not a political settlement (although it did not say that at the time), the political institutions “are not an end in themselves”.

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This presumably means that it sees Stormont as a temporary arrangement, which will disappear in a united Ireland.

In the meantime, the social and economic problems heaped on us by Stormont’s failure will, by Sinn Féin’s logic, leave us temporarily in purgatory, rather than permanently in hell.

However, Stormont’s institutionalised sectarianism is beginning to look disturbingly permanent.

If a united Ireland means uniting people, Stormont’s battle-a-day between Sinn Féin and the DUP makes that unity unlikely and........

© The Irish News