Morning View: London has got it badly wrong with election strategy

This is not to say that the DUP has got everything right in recent years. It has not. There are question marks over decisions from demanding big money to prop up the Tory government in 2017 (which ran the obvious risk of alienating power brokers) to initially welcoming the first iteration of Boris Johnson's protocol, and then playing down the impact of the disastrous full version.

But the failures of unionism, however large, do not remotely justify the pressure London has put on unionists when they are dealing with immense challenges, such as always having to share power with a party that is relentless in its bid to shatter the UK.

We will probably know this morning if the government is going to press ahead with an election.

If not then that is welcome, but nonetheless comes after ministers gave succour to nationalists by – in effect – pinpointing the DUP as the culprits for the stalemate.

But if it does press ahead with a poll then that will have been one of the worst decisions ever taken by a UK government with regard to NI. It will call for a total reappraisal of unionist political thinking.

The Northern Ireland Office yesterday said it would not countenance joint authority, but that was a hopelessly late statement.

Asked by ‘The Nolan Show’ and by this newspaper specifically about joint rule, it failed to make the matter clear and fuelled nationalist rhetoric.

It is bad enough that ministers have not contradicted Micheal Martin's foolish remark that there can be no return to direct rule when there might need to be just that.