DUP 'Will Not Get Everything It Wants' – Robinson

The DUP "will not get everything it wants" from the UK government, former party leader and First Minister Peter Robinson has warned.

Mr Robinson made the comments in an interview with BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme, where he was asked about the DUP's ongoing boycott of Stormont.

The DUP has refused to form a government since February 2023 in protest at post-Brexit trade agreements.

It is understood that the UK government have said that negotiations over additional changes to the Windsor Framework "are in the final stages", however the DUP claims that "gaps are outstanding".

During his interview on Talkback, Mr Robinson said that he supported the strategy taken by party leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, but warned that unionists "may have to release we have really pushed this one", and that he believed talks could not "go beyond the turn of the year".

Mr Robinson said that he hoped the DUP would form a new government in NI, which would allow them to negotiation further for changes to Framework.

Following Mr Robinson's comments, the DUP said that the former party leader was not speaking on their behalf, but was expressing "his own views and analyses … on the basis of years of experience".

The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) described Mr Robinson's comments as a "political distress flare" launched to help the DUP "find its way out of the cul-de-sac into which it has led itself and unionism over the last few years."

The UUP had previously fully backed the DUP's boycott of the Assembly, but over recent months has led unionist calls for a return to NI's powersharing Executive.

Following Mr Robinson's comments, Lord Empey said: "Much of what Peter said has been put forward by Doug Beattie over the last 22 months. The Stormont boycott has been a failure. The Windsor Framework and the Protocol before it have been thrust upon Northern Ireland because of a botched Brexit negotiation. The DUP were the prime movers in the headlong charge into Brexit without any plan for how the border issue was to be dealt with and followed the 'pied piper' Boris Johnson into the train wreck that Brexit has become for Northern Ireland.

"The DUP has railed against the border in the Irish Sea, which they foolishly welcomed on 2nd October 2019 when Johnson proposed it. They could have stopped Boris in his tracks then as they were propping up his government in Parliament but failed to do so. Arlene Foster has said that it was her greatest regret that she did not pull the plug on their deal with Johnson at that stage. The people of Northern Ireland have been paying for this blunder ever since."