Sinn Fein's win does not mean a breakup, govt says

The United Kingdom has insisted the success of the separatist Sinn Fein party in elections in Northern Ireland does not mean the province will imminently break from the rest of the country.

Brandon Lewis, the UK's Northern Ireland minister, said the people of the province "deserve a stable and accountable devolved government", which will be his priority in the short term. He began work on Monday to get the five major political parties to resume governance via the devolved Parliament known as the Stormont assembly, which has been in mothballs since February.

The devolved Parliament had been wracked with division between parties that want Northern Ireland to stay part of the UK－alongside England, Wales, and Scotland－and those wanting to break off and form a country with the Republic of Ireland.

Now, for the first time, the largest party in Stormont favors breaking from the UK.

But Lewis said the job of getting Stormont working again must complete before attention can be turned to what Sinn Fein will do.

"This process must begin with the nomination of an assembly speaker to allow legislation to progress and address the important issues affecting the people of Northern Ireland," he said.

The pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, which is now the second-largest party in Stormont, holds the key to whether it resumes because the party can refuse to name a deputy first minister to serve under Sinn Fein's first minister, something the DUP has threatened to do over its dissatisfaction with the Northern Ireland Protocol－the trading arrangement London agreed with the European Union as the UK left the bloc. The DUP says the protocol undermines Northern Ireland by treating it differently to other parts of the UK.

The Republic of Ireland's prime minister, Taoiseach Micheal Martin, told the broadcaster RTE on Monday that the DUP is being undemocratic by threatening to block the resumption of Stormont.

"My sense is the mandate they all got was to take their assembly seats and get into the executive," he said.

Far from easy

However, while Sinn Fein will surely advocate for the province to break from the UK when Stormont reopens, the process of leaving is far from easy.

The law requires a majority of people in Northern Ireland to support a break before a referendum can be held.

Despite the success of Sinn Fein in Thursday's election, the latest opinion polls suggest only around one-third of people want to break from the UK. Experts think a referendum will not happen for at least five years.

The Financial Times newspaper quoted Dominic Raab, the UK's deputy prime minister, as saying: "What I've noted is that 58 percent of those voting in these elections voted for either those that support the union or don't want to see constitutional change."