Rishi Sunak insists priority in Northern Ireland is not ‘constitutional change’
Rishi Sunak has insisted the priority in Northern Ireland is day-to-day governing rather than “constitutional change”.
The prime minister was in Northern Ireland to celebrate the restoration of power sharing in the nation.
This came after changes were made to the post-Brexit settlement, reducing the checks on goods travelling between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Follow live: PM meets Northern Ireland’s leaders
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) had held up the formation of an executive since 2022 due to their opposition to the situation.
This executive is the first to feature a nationalist as first minister, with Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill taking that role.
The deputy first minister – the DUP’s Emma Little-Pengelly – holds equal responsibility and power to Ms O’Neill under the Good Friday Agreement.
Mr Sunak said: “I had very constructive meetings this morning with the executive, with political leaders across Stormont, and it is a historic and important day for the country, because Northern Ireland’s politicians are back in charge, making decisions on behalf of their people, which is exactly how it should be.
“Now, our new deal gives them more funding and more powers than they have ever had, so they can deliver for families and businesses across Northern Ireland. And that’s what everyone’s priority is now.
“It is not constitutional change, it is delivering on the day-to-day things that matter to people.”
Leo Varadkar. Pic: PA
Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister, was also in Stormont today.
He and Mr Sunak met, after which a Downing Street spokesperson said: “The prime minister began by congratulating the Ireland rugby team for their emphatic win against France in the Six Nations on Friday.
“The prime minister turned to the day’s events and thanked the Taoiseach for the Irish government’s support for the UK government efforts to see restoration of devolution in Northern Ireland.
“This had been a challenging time, but patience had proved key to a deal. Now that the institutions were up and running again, he wanted to see all three strands functioning equally well. The sense of relief and optimism from people in Northern Ireland had been very striking and made it all worthwhile.
“The leaders reiterated their shared view that a stable, effective and successful Northern Ireland benefitted the UK-Irish relationship immensely. They looked forward to remaining in close contact.”
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Speaking afterwards, Mr Varadkar said: “I think the priority for any new executive in any government, in any country, has to be the day-to-day concerns of people.
“So, as you know, there are very long waiting lists in Northern Ireland – not a problem unique to Northern Ireland by any means.
“We have similar problems to others – issues around the economy and around public sector pay – and certainly the sense that I got from the first minister and deputy first minister and the executive is very keen to get stuck into their briefs.”
He repeated Mr Sunak’s words, saying that the focus of today should be on the re-establishment of the executive rather than “constitutional questions”.
Speaking over the weekend, Ms O’Neill said she could see a vote on Irish unification happening within the next decade.
In an article in the Belfast Telegraph this morning, Mr Sunak said: “The shape of Northern Ireland’s future is now clear: devolved government, within the United Kingdom, for as long as the majority wish it.”
He added: “The government will always give full and equal respect to constitutional nationalism and the desire for a united Ireland, pursued through peaceful and democratic means – just as we recognise that there are a growing number of people who do not define their aspirations by reference to one tradition or another.”
As part of the attempts to restore the executive, the UK government made a Ā£3.3bn “final offer” to Northern Ireland.
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Mr Sunak said this has “been widely recognised as being significant and generous”.
He added that it was focused on “long-term sustainability, ensuring that Northern Ireland has the funding it needs, not just for today to deal with the immediate challenges, but it is on a path to be able to provide high-quality public services into the future”.
Speaking at a meeting with Ms O’Neill and Ms Little-Pengelly, Mr Varadkar said: “It’s great that the institutions are back up and running again, we want the executive to be a success and to last, and keen to help in any way we can but not to interfere, but definitely to help, and keen to see the North South Ministerial Council up and running again as soon as possible, and the British Irish Council as well of course.”
Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf says his party’s mission is to “remoralise” young people.
Speaking off the back of his party’s massive gains in the local elections, Mr Yusuf said young people were being taught to “hate their country” and that Reform’s mission was to change their morals.
“There has been an industrial-scale demoralisation, particularly of young people in this country, who are basically being taught quite deliberately that they should hate their country; they should be deeply ashamed of their country’s history; that the United Kingdom had a brutal empire,” he told The Times.
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“Look, of course, you know, the British Empire was not perfect, but I actually think overall the British Empire did much more good for the world than it did bad.”
He said the party’s mission was to “remoralise” the youth and that within a couple of months of gaining power, Reform would erect statues of great British figures and end “all this woke nonsense”.
He continued: “How many young people know who Isambard Kingdom Brunel is? Look at the character assassination that has occurred on the legacy of Sir Winston Churchill.
“The fact that they have to cover up his statue because they don’t want to provoke protesters. I mean that’s the sort of utterly indefensible so-called leadership that we’ve had and young people feel that in their bones.”
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Inside Reform’s election success
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He said he believes Reform leader Nigel Farage’s message is “resonating” with young people and added: “I think that a lot of young people we speak to feel very smothered by a finger-wagging sort of teaching class.
“They feel very restricted, they feel a huge lack of opportunity ā¦ You’re going to hear from us over the next couple of years more and more of a policy platform for young people, for Gen Z and for millennials.”
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Voters turn to Reform UK
Mr Farage has been more focused on what his party’s trajectory is doing to the Conservatives, saying in his column for The Telegraph that Kemi Badenoch’s party had been “hollowed out” and is experiencing a “strange death” due to the rising popularity of Reform.
He said the UK had reached a “new political age”, reiterating earlier claims that two-party politics “is finished”.
Reform chairman Zia Yusuf will be appearing on Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips from 8.30am this morning.
OKX founder and CEO Star Xu has publicly defended the crypto exchange after Tron founder Justin Sun accused it of failing to act on a law enforcement request to freeze stolen funds following a recent hack of Tronās official X account.
āOKX also has consumers protection policy according to law, we canāt freeze a customerās funds according to your personal X post or an oral communication. I think you should understand it as the CEO of HTX,ā Xu said in an X post.
OKX says there is no communication in the spam box, either
Xu said that the crypto exchange had not received any related correspondence through OKXās official channels. āOur LE cooperation team just checked the email, including the spam box; we havenāt received any request related with this case,ā Xu said.
In what is now an unavailable X post, but was screenshotted by Xu, Sun had earlier claimed that OKX has not responded to a āfreeze noticeā sent to its official email address from a ārelevant law enforcement agency.ā Sun said that he had no other way to contact OKXās compliance department.
āThese stolen funds do not belong to me; Iām acting to protect the community,ā Sun said. On May 3, Tron DAO told its 1.7 million X followers that its account had been compromised. Tron explained that during the breach, an unauthorized party posted a malicious contract address, sent direct messages, and followed unfamiliar accounts.
āIf you received a DM from our account on May 2, please delete it and consider it the work of the attacker.ā
In response to Sunās claims of inaction, Xu publicly called on him to provide a screenshot showing when and where the law enforcement request was made.
The Tron incident is one of several recent security breaches involving high-profile crypto accounts on X.
Related: Over 14,500 Tron addresses at risk of silent hijacking
Kaito AI, an artificial intelligence-powered platform that aggregates crypto data to provide market analysis for users, and its founder, Yu Hu, were the victims of an X social media hack on March 15. The hackers opened up a short position on KAITO tokens before posting that the Kaito wallets were compromised and advised users that their funds were not safe.
The Pump.fun X account was compromised on Feb. 26 to promote a fake governance token called āPUMPā and other fraudulent coins.
Meanwhile, the X account of UK member of Parliament and Leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell, was hacked to promote a scam crypto token.
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