Naomi Long says the NI secretary must do 'heavy lifting' or face blame for a future Executive collapse.
Failure to reform the power-sharing institutions at Stormont will have "real-world consequences," Alliance leader Naomi Long has said.She warned that the Northern Ireland Secretary must do "heavy lifting" on the issue or he will carry the blame for future collapse.Alliance has called for changes to how Northern Ireland's political system is structured, so that one party cannot block the formation of an executive in the future.
Mrs Long welcomed those remarks, adding that tinkering around the edges of reform will be "merely a sticking plaster" that will not hold. On arrival at the Stormont Hotel - the regular haunt for their conferences - a senior party member told me this would likely be their last year here due to outgrowing the space.
But demanding reform and actually delivering it are two very different things - and it's not those inside the conference room that the party still need to persuade. The Alliance leader criticised the prime minister Rishi Sunak, and said his government "has nothing left to offer but tax cuts for the rich and misery for the rest".
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