Northern Ireland revives power-sharing talks after UK vote

Northern Ireland’s faltering efforts to resurrect its collapsed government resumed yesterday following a general election in Britain that might give rival parties a new incentive to agree.

The politically and socially volatile region’s devolved assembly at Stormont has been without a government since January 2017.

The power-sharing executive between the Irish republican Sinn Fein party and the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) crumbled in the wake of a scandal over misspending.

Numerous rounds of talks aimed at filling the power vacuum failed in increasingly acrimonious talks between the two largest parties of the British province.

The process was complicated when an election in 2017 stripped then-prime minister Theresa May of her majority and thrust the DUP into a working alliance with the British government.

The DUP turned into a kingmaker and wielded an outsized influence in London during intense Brexit negotiations that had wider implications for the European Union.

But the party lost that role when a general election Thursday gave Prime Minister Boris Johnson a massive majority in the UK parliament.

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said she hoped the DUP will now refocus its attention on Northern Irish politics.

“The only positive from Boris Johnson’s definitive majority is the possibility -- and I hope the probability -- that the DUP will disengage themselves from their fixation with the melodrama in Westminster, and bring their attention back home again,” she told Ireland’s RTE broadcaster.