The DUP is clearly trying to avoid an accident after the failure of the Stormont Brake.
The party has been humiliated by Secretary of State Hilary Benn’s refusal to use the Windsor Framework mechanism, which was created to help the DUP end its boycott of devolution.
Every unionist MLA signed a petition in December requesting the brake’s use over a new EU labelling law for chemical products.
They had legitimate grounds to do so: the chemicals industry told Stormont’s Windsor Framework committee the law will cause serious problems. So Benn’s refusal shows the mechanism is worthless.
“There will be consequences,” DUP MP Sammy Wilson warned on social media. But what can his party do?
The TUV is demanding another Stormont boycott, but the DUP knows that would be a disaster for itself and unionism.
The UUP has blamed Sinn Féin and Alliance for dismissing industry’s warnings at the committee, but there is a limit to how much the DUP can blame Sinn Féin for its own failures without undermining itself and the executive.
DUP leader Gavin Robinson has condemned Benn’s decision as “a grave mistake”, then left it at that. He has to keep the show on the road.
Wilson’s message suggests the real consequence and danger to Stormont could be tensions within the DUP.
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Perhaps the bigger danger is another welfare reform crisis. Chancellor Rachel Reeves is under pressure to bring forward planned cuts to disability benefits, due to the fallout from her calamitous October budget.
Stormont’s three-year welfare reform crisis from 2012 was over relatively minor changes to a handful of benefits, with the so-called ‘bedroom tax’ receiving most attention.
[ Newton Emerson: Stormont needs to get ahead of Labour on benefits reformOpens in new window ]
Sinn Féin felt unable to wave this through and began obstructing executive business. It eventually agreed to hand the decision to London and let Stormont top up payments, which now costs a manageable £45 million a year.
Any meaningful cut to disability benefits would be in a different league, politically and economically.
It is likely no executive party could stand over it, but that does not guarantee they would maintain a united front in a high-stakes stand-off with London.
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Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, several commentators have suggested England needs a Northern Ireland-type Parades Commission to deal with the rise in demonstrations.
The ceasefire in Gaza has not removed that need: a march in London last weekend broke police conditions designed to stop protestors assembling in the vicinity of a synagogue.
Almost 80 arrests followed and officers have interviewed former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell.
Ironically for those seeking Northern Ireland-inspired solutions, six Sinn Féin MPs and SDLP MP Colum Eastwood signed statements and motions before the march condemning the police restrictions.
Can they not see the parallel with the Parades Commission banning Orangemen from stopping outside a Catholic church?
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President Trump’s inauguration has raised hopes and fears across Northern Ireland’s political spectrum.
Few parties have made their hopes as clear as the TUV. Jim Allister and Timothy Gaston, its lone MP and lone MLA, have tabled motions at Westminster and Stormont congratulating Trump and insisting that “the EU’s colonial control of the trade and economic laws of Northern Ireland is ended before any trade deal is negotiated with the United Kingdom”.
Reminding everyone that Northern Ireland could be an obstacle to a UK-US trade deal may not be the move of strategic genius the TUV seems to believe.
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Part of the dubious appeal of President Trump is that he appears thrillingly decisive in an age when it seems government can get nothing done. That brings us to the admittedly minor matter of MOT testing in Northern Ireland.
Sinn Féin infrastructure minister John O’Dowd has launched a public consultation on increasing the period between tests to two years. It frequently takes over a year for these exercises to produce a report.
Despite their ubiquity, consultations are rarely required by law. They are often justified as preventing judicial review, yet flawed consultations are often how decisions are challenged in court.
Civil servants consider them ‘best practice’ and look baffled when asked if they are really necessary. But in this case, what more needs to be known?
O’Dowd says he wants to hear from the public, the motor trade and safety and environmental groups.
It is obviously safe to have inspections every two years, as that is the requirement under EU law. The public, as motorists, want fewer tests. Environmentalists want more.
The motor trade will be unhappy as there will be less MOT servicing and people may hang onto their cars for longer.
But it is not the minister’s job to generate business for garages. It is his job is to decide how often tests are needed and he could make that decision today.
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The dismantling of a peace wall in Water Street in Portadown has been widely welcomed but celebration should not be overdone.
The wall was unusually remote, standing at one end of a long-derelict street with the River Bann on the other side.
It was put up in 1998, a horrifically violent Drumcree year, essentially to give the security forces one less access point to worry about while locking down the Garvaghy Road side of town.
The wall’s removal is still good news and separate plans for new housing in Water Street are a significant vote of confidence in the area.
But it is ominous it has taken over 20 years longer than necessary to address one of the least tricky interface sites in Northern Ireland.
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The number of Stormont civil servants being sacked every year has fit a five-year high, with 188 dismissed last year for various reasons.
Alliance deputy leader Eoin Tennyson, who sits on Stormont’s finance committee, has expressed concern this may indicate a rise in bullying. There has been a sharp rise in “dignity at work” investigations, although only to 20 last year.
While this is nothing to cheer, it does contradict the common perception that Stormont civil servants are effectively unsackable.
The 188 total is 0.8% of the workforce, not too far off the 1.3% figure for the UK workforce as a whole and way above the 0.3% figure for civil servants in Britain.