[https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/comment/cabinet-reshuffle-likely-means-therell-be-no-end-to-stormont-stalemate-this-year/a400047905.html](https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/comment/cabinet-reshuffle-likely-means-therell-be-no-end-to-stormont-stalemate-this-year/a400047905.html)
There’s chaos in the UK government.
And it all likely means there will be no Northern Ireland restoration at Stormont before next year – unless Jeffrey Donaldson stages the mother of all climbdowns. Such humiliating manoeuvres have never been a feature of hard-line unionism.
In Ireland, James Cleverly will be seen as no particular loss by Iveagh House and the Department of the Taoiseach.
The former foreign secretary was involved in a major exploration with the Northern Ireland parties that managed to exclude Mary Lou McDonald, sparking a boycott by Sinn Féin and the SDLP. As an initiative it was crass in the extreme and made the mood worse, not better.
David Cameron will undoubtedly bring more heft to the post, but never showed much interest in Northern Ireland during his days in Downing Street – apart from one standout moment: he apologised for the Bloody Sunday murders by the parachute regiment in Co Derry in January 1972 following the publication of the report of the Saville Inquiry in 2010.
It was a landmark moment, but one that now probably marks him out as a man of suspicion for the Democratic Unionist Party.
Cameron’s other landmark moment, of course, was to call the Brexit referendum held in June 2016, when he confidently urged that the UK remain in that community of nations. It is notable that the DUP opposed him then.
What happened then has been the author of many misfortunes since, including the DUP’s own drawn-out difficulties with the Withdrawal Agreement, the border in the Irish Sea business, the Northern Ireland Protocol – which caused the party to collapse the Northern institutions – and even the Windsor Framework, which was exhaustively negotiated to put things right.
As Tánaiste Micheál Martin has pointed out, Jeffrey Donaldson failed to claim victory on the Windsor deal and has since been holding out for some Westminster legislative assurances.
Of course Westminster, in the continuing political fallout from Brexit, has been almost entirely concerned with itself. Wee Jeffrey is a very small dissatisfied figure on its horizon.
On the other hand, perhaps Suella Braverman got what she wanted through being sacked: an opportunity to lie in the Tory long grass.
Her wildly intemperate remarks about hate marches – and [comparisons to Northern Ireland](https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/suella-braverman-could-be-facing-sack-amid-row-over-ni-hate-marches-comment/a573310334.html) in an op-ed piece for the Times – finally sealed her fate.
But those comparisons demonstrated the utter ignorance of Northern Ireland that exists in the upper echelons of the Tories. Some 90pc of marches in the North are by unionists, while Suella and friends style themselves Conservative and Unionist Party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Naturally Ian Paisley Jr generously interpreted that Ms Braverman had been talking about the opposite side to his own. But senior DUP members knew better: it was just another demonstration that their existential angst no longer holds purchase in the London corridors of power.
The Sunak reshuffle appears to have spared the northern secretary, Chris Heaton Harris, who is seen in Dublin as a hopeless appointment.
In his best defence, he has evidently received no indication of policy direction from Downing Street, and is just muddling along.
Ireland is an afterthought in London, and one easily dismissed at that.
by Constant__18