In the lead up to the elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly on 5 May 2022, opinion polls indicate that the issues of most concern to the voters of Northern Ireland are the cost of living and the crisis in the NHS. Nevertheless, dominating the campaign are two issues that the new Northern Ireland government will have no power to resolve: the Northern Ireland Protocol and a united Ireland. Already the former has led the Democratic Unionist Party to withdraw from the Executive. I discuss this paradox in ‘A Cycle of Crisis and Collapse: Elections for the Northern Ireland Assembly’, an article published in the online magazine Tinteán, which gives background information on the forthcoming elections and on the current stalemate at Stormont.

I have previously written about Brexit and Ireland in the following articles published in the online blog Pearls and Irritations:
Ireland and Brexit: the Good News
Ireland and Brexit: Time to NIxit? – Part 1: A Question of Identity
Ireland and Brexit: Time to NIxit? – Part 2: The Economy, Stupid
Bumbling Boris’ Brexit bombast, a bitter brew for Northern Ireland