Bypassing the centre and trying to broker a peace of the extremes in Northern Ireland was always going to come back to haunt the government

The prospects of a deal in Northern Ireland seem to be receding. If the talks and, therefore the executive, do collapse, it will show how foolish it was of Jonathan Powell to try for this peace of the extremes. Powell decided that rather than spending hours negotiating with the UUP and the SDLP, the quicker way was to just go round them and deal directly with the extremes  on both ends of the spectrum (though, it is important to remember that however bigoted some DUP members are there is no moral equivalence with Sinn Fein). The theory was that these parties would have more room for manoeuvre as they could not be outflanked. But this has, unsurprisingly, not turned out to be true.

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Robin Ashenden

Keir Starmer, the Christmas Grinch

The DUP have made the abolition of the parades commission a condition of any agreement. But this is very hard for Sinn Fein to swallow as it would easily allow the dissidents to outflank them.