Republican Deadlines and Unionist Secrets
Over the weekend the Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey told us about a telephone conversation he had on Friday with Hillary Clinton. When the US Secretary of State pressed him to go the extra mile on devolving justice he replied that she was the only person who had rung him on the matter that day. She was apparently slightly taken aback - his point being that, as he has complained for the last few weeks, that his party had been excluded from the justice talks.
But maybe the UUP haven't been quite as excluded as they have been leading us all to believe, as it seems Danny Kennedy and Tom Elliot were in England on Sunday for a chat with Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds, facilitated by the Conservative NI spokesman Owen Paterson.
The Tories say this was all about promoting political stability and bringing the unionists together on the thorny question of justice. All entirely suitable stuff for a party which might inherit the Stormont impasse in a few months time to be working on.
They deny that the meeting covered hung parliaments or electoral pacts. But one participant did confirm to me that unionist unity as a long term goal did feature in the discussions, and the presence of Tom Elliot, given his Fermanagh base, raised a few eyebrows.
Certainly if this meeting is part of a unionist power play to warn Sinn Fein that they can't count on being the biggest party at Stormont then the participants will have to get cracking in the immediate term rather than just talking about long term aspirations.
If it isn't, then the Conservatives and Unionists will have to get cracking to try to re-establish their supposed brand identity regarding normal non-sectarian politics. This doesn't sit easily alongside any attempts to re-establish a united unionist monolith.
All the while the clock is ticking at Stormont - after yesterday's rumours of Sinn Fein ultimatums, today's Belfast Telegraph reckons the latest is for midnight tonight. Sinn Fein won't confirm this, but the timing would gel with the party's planned officer board meeting tomorrow. Government officials were undoubtedly burning the midnight oil last night as if they were working to a tight timetable.
P.S. Thanks to the reader who suggested the last entry should have been called "Tottering Tuesday".
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