The high price of failure: Derry Journal Editorial

And it really does beggar belief at a time when the vast majority of people are feeling the chill.

Money is tight. It is tight in households as inflation soars above 10% with rocketing food and fuel prices; it is tight for local businesses who have not received the help they could or should have as the Executive stasis continues.

People are struggling. And we know that there are hundreds of millions of pounds tied up at Stormont which could have helped. We know there were plans in place to distribute that money and plans to reform a health service in crisis. Much of this hasn’t happen. And that is a disgrace.

It has been mentioned several times in this column, but so it is worth mentioning again: the DUP wanted a hard Brexit. The Protocol was a direct result of that.

Sinn Féin can’t be blamed for it, nor the SDLP or Alliance Party. This is a mess of the Brexit cheerleaders’ own making and today we see the UK economy in crisis, a government in meltdown, and shrinking on the world stage.

And now after the historic election in May which returned a nationalist first minister in what could have been a new dawn for relations , we are instead about to squander another £6.5m on an election. Why?

Everyone in this part of a world deserves to be protected and represented. We, all of us, deserve better than this.