Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin leader in Northern Ireland, is poised to become the first nationalist first minister at Stormont after the DUP said it would be lifting its boycott of power sharing. The DUP agreed to resume participation in the power sharing executive, which has been suspended for almost two years, on the basis of a deal agreed with the UK government to revise some of the post-Brexit trading rules that disadvantaged Northern Ireland. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, played down the significance of O’Neill becoming first minister (see 3.51pm), but it is bound to be seen as a historic moment for Northern Ireland, where the unionists have been the dominant political community for most of the last century and where Sinn Féin was for many years marginalised because of its links with the IRA. Donaldson also claimed the deal was a victory for his party, because it confounded critics who claimed the DUP would never be able to change the legal terms of the Windsor framework. (See 4.49pm.) Details of the deal have not yet been published, and it is possible that their release tomorrow will lead to claims that Donaldson has over-sold what has been achieved. But with Sinn Féin and other parties welcoming the prospect of Stormont being revised, Dublin and Brussels apparently relaxed about the Windsor framework being altered, and no significant figures from the DUP speaking out against the deal, the Northern Ireland executive does seem on course to return within days. The International Monetary Fund has issued a strong warning to Jeremy Hunt against cutting taxes in his budget in March, stressing the need to boost key areas of public spending instead. The UK Covid inquiry is struggling to understand how Nicola Sturgeon took key decisions during the pandemic because her “gold command” meetings were not minuted, the inquiry has heard. Keir Starmer’s office has begun polling British Muslim voters amid growing concern in senior Labour ranks about the damage done to their core vote by the row over the party’s position on the Middle East. Councils in England are to be encouraged to sell publicly owned buildings and other assets worth up to £23bn under plans being explored by ministers to plug budget shortfalls amid the crisis in local government.