Northern Ireland has slipped into political crisis after Sinn Féin’s triumph in the assembly election triggered calls for a referendum on a united Ireland and the Democratic Unionist party vowed to block the formation of a new power-sharing executive at Stormont.
Jubilant Sinn Féin supporters celebrated across the region on Saturday when final vote counts confirmed a historic victory that turned the former IRA mouthpiece into the biggest party, with the right to nominate the first minister.
Sinn Féin won 29% of the first preference vote and will be the biggest party in the Stormont assembly, a seismic moment for a state that was designed a century ago to have a permanent unionist majority. » | Rory Carroll and Lisa O'Carroll in Magherafelt, and Toby Helm | Saturday, May 7, 2022
With Sinn Féin’s victory, tectonic plates have shifted in Northern Ireland: In Yeats’s words, ‘all changed, changed utterly’ »
