The DUP pledges to extend Stormont County until Northern Ireland’s budget is boosted

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Northern Ireland’s largest unionist party has pledged to extend its boycott of Stormont’s political institutions until London fixes the region’s budget and offers guarantees of its place in the UK.

DUP leader Sir Geoffrey Donaldson said on Monday that last week’s local council elections gave “a new mandate to go back to government and secure the solutions we need”.

The DUP has boycotted Stormont’s executive council and power-sharing since the provincial election last May in protest of post-Brexit trade rules, which it says undermine the region’s position in the UK and its home market.

Despite the Windsor Framework, a deal agreed by London and Brussels to overcome hurdles to Brexit, Donaldson said more changes were still needed to “restore our place in the UK and our ability to trade with the rest of the UK”.

The party held all its seats and suffered no losses to the hardline traditional unionist vote, raising expectations that it may slowly move towards a return to Stormont, likely this fall.

But Donaldson told reporters, “I think the mandate given to us in the council election is a mandate to finish the job.” He said he would meet this week with Chris Heaton Harris, the UK’s secretary for Northern Ireland, to push for a “needs-based budget” for the region.

He said Barnett’s current formula, which is designed to ensure that the UK’s devolved regions receive commensurate government funding from London, “doesn’t check”. In Stormont’s absence, Heaton Harris made a difficult budget and criticized the “years of financial mismanagement” of the district’s finances.

Earlier, Gavin Robinson, the DBU MP, told the BBC that with the region’s budget deficit estimated at £800m the only option currently was to cut spending and “that’s just not good enough for Northern Ireland”.

“If we see – and we want to see – a return to devolution, it will have to be coupled with a fundamental recalibration of how Northern Ireland is funded,” he said.

The pro-Ireland Sinn Féin, the Unity Party, won a bigger-than-expected victory in Thursday’s election, taking control of six of Northern Ireland’s 11 councils and 144 of the 462 seats. The Democratic Unionist Union (DUP) retained 122 chancellors.

“There’s been very clear vision now twice, over the course of a year, from voters that they want Stormont back in place,” Conor Murphy, the former finance minister, told Sinn Féin.

Gene Brady, the head of the region’s civil service, summoned the five main parties for talks Thursday about the crisis as politically sensitive cuts to health services, education, nursing training and apprenticeships loom.

But the Democratic Unionist Party wants more than money for the region. Heaton-Harris has promised legislative changes to reassure unionists that Northern Ireland’s place in the UK is safe after Brexit and the establishment of customs borders in the Irish Sea.

A former DUP special adviser said the party was looking for a commitment that there could be no preparation for a future referendum on Irish reunification until a vote on the issue had taken place in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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“The electoral base supported what we wanted. It’s up to you,” said Heaton-Harris, the DUP adviser, who said he only saw a 50:50 chance of Stormont resuming after the traditional union rally season in July.

“If they can’t get it back by the fall, they might as well wait [UK] Labor government,” he said. “Why are you negotiating with the British government anymore?”

A former party strategist was more optimistic, seeing a 60 percent chance of Stormont returning before Christmas.

“It is likely more than that,” he added. “But it is certainly not inevitable.”

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