Northern Ireland unity government crumbles, faces March vote
DUBLIN — Northern Ireland’s shattered unity government will be dissolved next week to make way for an early election demanded by the coalition’s main Irish Catholic party, the secretary of state for the British territory announced Monday.
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland James Brokenshire said the election to re-elect the Northern Ireland Assembly would be held March 2, six weeks after its dissolution.
Brokenshire’s declaration became inevitable once the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party refused hours earlier to fill its vacated top post in the nearly decade-old coalition with the major British Protestant party, the Democratic Unionists.
The warring parties face a potentially brutal election that could determine whether their unity government — centerpiece of Northern Ireland’s peace accord — can ever be put back together again.