Gavan Reilly: Time to think of a Plan B on sorry state of affairs north of the border

Had my mind not been overtaken by the main body of this week’s column, there’s a good chance I’d have found myself writing about the sorry state of affairs north of the border.

There’s no need to rehash the reasons why Northern Ireland has been without a functional government for the last few years – the bigger point is that there is now no reason to think power-sharing will ever come back.

Events in the last week might well be the final nail in the coffin. The strike by public sector workers is enormous in its scale – 10% of the North’s entire population were off work last Thursday. That, and another legal deadline for an Executive, prompted one final symbolic attempt of going through the motions in the Stormont chamber. The DUP was not for budging. Many MLAs publicly announced that they didn’t expect to ever be back in the chamber again.

The final nail came on Friday when the DUP convened to decide if the time was right to go back… and stopped short of making a decision, for fear Jeffrey Donaldson would lose the vote to restore it. The Rubicon is crossed. Time to start thinking about Plan B.