Welcome to F.T. Politics, the Financial Times weekly discussion on what's happening in Westminster.

I'm Sebastian Payne.

In this week's episode, we'll be discussing the abortion referendum in Ireland and its implications for Northern Ireland

and whether raising taxes is the only solution to fix the A-Ling NHS.

I'm delighted to be joined by our chief economics commentator Martin Wolf

I'm in correspondence Arthur Beasley, pharmaceutical editor Sarah Neville

and deputy comment editor Miranda Green.

Thank you all for joining and if you like this episode of

FT politics don't forget to subscribe through the usual channels to receive it

every Saturday morning. Ireland's vote to unravel its draconian and abortion laws last week had a dramatic impact.

As well as the celebration of the country's increasingly liberal social attitudes, it has raised

some pertinent questions about whether their northern neighbors are next.

Unlike the rest of the UK, abortion is still severely restricted in Northern Ireland.

Almost 200 MPs in Westminster have declared they are going to do something about it.

But without a functioning government in Stormont and the socially conservative Democratic

Unionist propping up Theresa May's government, there's no clear path forward.

So Arthur Beecie, let's just begin by what

happened in Ireland last weekend. The referendum on whether to relax the

abortion laws has been going for a couple of weeks now. It's been very tense

with a lot of bad

faith and bad language from both sides. Then this vote came through with a

significant vote for the yes side. Yes, you're quite right Sebastian.

...