Sue Gray, the former senior Northern Ireland civil servant who later served as chief of staff to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has expressed deep concern about the pace of decision-making at Stormont. Speaking at an SDLP conference in Belfast examining constitutional change, she said the power-sharing institutions are too slow and that the public deserves faster action and decisions.

Gray proposed that Northern Ireland should adopt metro mayors similar to those in English city-regions to give more authority to local leaders. She suggested at least two, covering Belfast and Londonderry, to take quicker regional decisions currently bogged down in bureaucracy.

The event also heard warnings that a future UK government led by Reform UK could act as an accelerant to the debate on Irish unification. Former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that if Reform pushed for a harder Brexit and withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights, it could pose fundamental challenges to the Good Friday Agreement and hasten calls for a border poll. He described a Reform-led administration as a possibility rather than a probability but said it could force difficult questions about Northern Ireland’s constitutional future.

Ireland’s Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan told the conference that unity referendums could be held before the end of this decade if political upheaval in Britain triggered such a scenario. He repeated his view that the Police Service of Northern Ireland could be retained in a united Ireland, working alongside the Garda, much like separate regional forces in England. O’Callaghan also said the Irish government must begin prudent planning for constitutional change, emphasizing the need to approach the issue sensitively given unionist concerns.

Former First Minister of Wales Mark Drakeford argued that a future Labour government under Andy Burnham should abolish the roles of secretaries of state for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, calling them territorial and outdated.

SDLP leader Claire Hanna said the rise of English nationalism was a serious factor in the unity debate and that the prospect of a Reform-influenced Westminster government could create a crisis that required careful preparation.