Summary
Mark Carruthers is joined by Gareth Gordon, Julia Langdon and former NIO Minister, Sir Richard Needham to ask whether Northern Ireland still matters to the Conserative Party.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The current crop of unionist leaders have been given a place at the Tories top table in Manchester this week, or so it seems. |
| 0:06.6 | Geoffrey Donaldson, Doug Beatty, Jim Alistair and Arlene Foster have been sharing their thoughts on the protocol, |
| 0:11.5 | the triggering of Article 16 and their desire to get rid of the Irish sea border. |
| 0:16.1 | Boris Johnson, Lord Frost and Brandon Lewis have been making reassuring noises apparently, |
| 0:20.2 | but is there any real depth to the public and private exchanges we've seen over the past few days? |
| 0:25.2 | Does Northern Ireland still hold anything like the central position in what some people might think of as the national conversation that it once did? |
| 0:33.6 | Gareth, you've been in Manchester all week. What's your sense of how important those Northern Ireland-related debates |
| 0:38.4 | and discussions have been? |
| 0:40.5 | Well, Mark, you know I love a good football analogy. |
| 0:43.6 | I'm not going to disappoint you here. |
| 0:45.3 | I would say we're not Premier League, |
| 0:47.5 | but we're top of the second division. |
| 0:50.3 | Okay, that's either a good place or a very bad place to be, |
| 0:53.6 | depending on your point of view. |
| 0:54.9 | Julia, is Northern Ireland demonstrably slipping down the UK's news agenda, |
| 1:00.5 | despite where we are with the protocol and the Irish sea border? |
| 1:04.4 | Well, you use the phrase central position. |
| 1:06.9 | It occupies a central position, of course, to the Brexit issue and the protocol. So it's very important. |
| 1:14.2 | But it is not important, I have to say, in UK news terms, I mean, GB news terms. |
| 1:20.9 | Sir Richard, we've seen Tory's courting and being courted by unionist leaders over the past few days. |
| 1:26.1 | Do you think it's all from the teeth out, though? |
| 1:28.1 | I'm sorry to disagree with my two friends. |
... |
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