THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC and Labour Party (SDLP) has today signalled its intention to form an official opposition ahead of the recalled Northern Ireland Assembly.

The Assembly is to be recalled tomorrow in a bid to elect a new Speaker and take action on the cost of living crisis. It will be the third time members have been recalled since the May election.

Elected parties have yet to form an Executive since the election and SDLP Leader Colum Eastwood MP has written to the Speaker about the party’s intention to form an official opposition. 

The SDLP leader said that the party will form “an opposition to the politics of division, deadlock and failure” which he said has seen the devolved institutions frozen while families across Northern Ireland are hit again and again by soaring energy bills.

Eastwood has also formally nominated South Belfast MLA Matthew O’Toole as Leader of the Opposition.

“More than two months after people were promised change in May’s Assembly election we still have no new Executive, no new schemes to address soaring energy bills, no new ideas to get the show back on the road,” Eastwood said.

“Despite big promises made to get money into people’s pockets and to address the real challenges families are facing, we’ve got more of the same failure that came before.”

He said his party had already provided strong opposition to the Tory/DUP axis at Westminster and now it will provide a “constructive alternative to the politics of division, deadlock and failure that has gripped this place for far too long”.

“We will provide a new kind of politics that addresses the problems facing parents and families across our communities,” he said.

Eastwood said ministers and politicians taking home full salaries “cannot be allowed to hide or fail to account for their decisions while families and businesses across the North struggle to make ends meet”.

“It doesn’t matter who you are, what your background, or where you live, people are being badly let down across our communities and it needs to come to an end,” he said.