Once again Northern Ireland is in the headlines. Stormont is on the brink of collapse and the febrile politics of orange, green and everything in between is exposed to all who do not live there.
An election for the Stormont assembly looms in May and on Friday the Democratic Unionist party raised the stakes again.
If the withdrawal of the first minister and an order to halt Brexit food checks mandated under the Northern Ireland protocol was not enough to convince voters it was serious in its battle against the EU and its “cheerleaders” on local territory, it also made veiled threats about its ability to return to power-sharing after the polls if the Brexit issues it is fighting are not resolved.
But behind all of the melodrama lie several basic issues: the DUP is battling to recover support in the polls and Boris Johnson’s promises to address the party’s concerns over the checks are stalling.
The DUP’s leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, revealed on Friday that the prime minister had told him it would take just three weeks to get a new deal on the protocol last October. More than three months later, Johnson is still arguing the case but is not cancelling the protocol.
Yes Johnson has shown he likes to keep the Brexit pot boiling, recently accusing Brussels of implementing the Northern Ireland protocol in an “insane and pettifogging way”.
The PM also told Donaldson last week that there was only a 20-30% chance of a new Brexit deal in the next few weeks, so the party may have been wise not to heed his earlier promises.
By walking out of Stormont’s first minister’s office, the DUP is signalling that it wants the protocol to be centre stage for the approaching election.
It may not be a winning argument as Lord Frost and others, before and after his resignation as Brexit minister, have never agreed that the protocol will be scrapped.
For this reason the Ulster Unionist party (UUP) leader, Doug Beattie, described the DUP drama this week as “crazy”, futile, “as the protocol will still be there” after the election.
Gavin Barwell, Theresa May’s former chief of staff, was equally blunt. “It should now be clear to the DUP that supporting Brexit was a huge strategic error for them and unionism in NI. It’s reduced support for the Union. It’s led to a border in the Irish Sea (because the ERG prefer that to the alternative – customs union + regulatory alignment),” he tweeted this week.
The stakes for the DUP in that post-Brexit world could not be higher.
Sinn Féin remains on course to overtake the DUP as the largest single party in Northern Ireland for the first time, with the UUP snapping at the DUP’s heels.
Recent polls give Sinn Féin 25% of the vote, eight points ahead of the DUP and on course to take the first minister’s position.
This is a nightmare scenario for the DUP which has over recent months refused to confirm whether it would participate in a coalition with a Sinn Féin first minister or take up the role of deputy first minister if returned as the second biggest party.
On the unionist front it is fighting a re-energised UUP which was placed in joint-third place with the Alliance party in the most recent opinion poll in January.
While the UUP may have taken a knock from the recent row over the historic tweets of its leader, Beattie, he is still in place and fighting to convince voters the party offers a more socially liberal outlook than the DUP.
Polls south of the border have also seen an extraordinary rise in the popularity of Sinn Féin.
Although the next general election in Ireland is three years away, the party is in contention to be part of a government in Dublin and the spectre of a border poll on a united Ireland haunts unionists.
It is on this wider canvas that the events of this week have played out in Belfast.
