It's just after three o'clock on Wednesday, the 12th of January, and a new year stretches out before us.

We'll all have a few red letter days circled in the diary already, not least, of course, an Assembly election, 16 weeks tomorrow on May the 5th.

So without being able to second-guess the coming events we can know nothing about. We're going to look ahead to the big

issues we expect to dominate the coming political year on this week's red lines. And with me to do

that, three accomplished soothsayers who are no strangers to this podcast, our political editor,

Enda McLaughertie, our health correspondent, Mary Louise Connolly, and our economics and business

editor John Campbell. Welcome to all of you. And we expect a

number of ongoing issues to continue to frame the agenda in the months ahead. Brexit and the

protocol, the pandemic, the politics of health, legacy, culture, that kind of thing. But we can't

escape the reality, I suppose, that pretty much everything needs to be seen through the prism

of the next

assembly election. Yes, and that is exactly how the political parties at Stormont are looking

at things right now, Mark. They are in full election mode, candidates selected for various

constituencies, working out their campaigns, if you like, which will officially start, of course,

at the end of March,

but which have already been up on way for some time now. And nothing, as they say, focuses a politician's

mind like an election on the horizon because it's all about survival. As you say, there's a

pick and mix of issues out there already, of course, which voters are grappling with, not least

the crisis in the health with, not least the crisis

and the health service picking up the pieces, maybe as a pandemic, we hope, starts to fade

a little bit. And then, of course, there's the data on complications of energy costs and everything

else coming down the track. But as we know in these parts, whenever we slip into full election mode,

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