Latest updates: No 10 has again denied that Boris Johnson was warned in advance of the party in the Downing Street garden on 20 May 2020

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At the end of last week the government announced that it plans to relax the “double jobbing” ban for Northern Ireland parliamentarians, to allow someone elected as an MP to sit in the Northern Ireland assembly at the same time. The new system would only apply until 2024, and someone serving as an MP and an MLA (member of the legislative assembly) would not get two salaries.

This will allow Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader and MP, to stand for the assembly in the May elections without having to give up his Westminster seat.

I think there is a case to be made at this particular time in the current circumstances of Northern Ireland. It is important for unionism to have a strong voice in the parliament of the United Kingdom.

Let’s not get away from the fact that this so-called announcement, which was on Twitter yesterday, which is effectively the end of the BBC as we know it, a huge policy announcement, is nothing more than a really obvious, pathetic distraction from a prime minister and a government who has run out of road and whose leadership is hanging by a thread.

Let’s not pretend that this is anything other than it is, which is a pretty obvious dead cat strategy from the government to distract from the totally disastrous leadership context that the prime minister is facing at the moment.

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Source: The Guardian