We've had a chance to catch our breath this week. It's the midterm break after six weeks with no let-up,

and that was after a year, the like of which none of us could ever have predicted. So in this

edition of Red Lines, we're going to press the pause button and take stock of where we are and where

we've come from, and maybe we'll even allow ourselves to think about where we might be going in the immediate months ahead.

It's fair to say, I think you've had a baptism of fire since Christmas.

All pretty predictable, it has to be said, though, because it was much the same in those months leading up to Christmas.

The picture hasn't changed dramatically, but you would like to think that we are in a better place now,

moving in the right direction with the pandemic, and you always get the sense, of course,

that there are other things happening out there when all of a sudden COVID-19 isn't

dominating the news agenda every day as it was, of course, in that other side of Christmas.

Finnella, when you look back on the immediate recent past, what stands out for you as most

worthy of comment?

I think it was that poll, which I think has so rattled the DUP that it bleeds into the political

situation generally.

The poll would show DUP support going to, or seem to show DUP support going to the TUV and to Alliance as well.

Yeah, that was the lucid talk poll in the Belfast Telegraph that we've talked about on Red Lines before.

And the interesting thing, Finula, and it's a poll, it's a snapshot in time we know, and it comes caveated like all other polls.

But it's suggested, didn't it, that that that hemorrhaging,

if it happens in May of next year, we'll go in two directions and the DUP in a sense needs

to be looking over both shoulders if it's right. Which is the weirdest of all things when you think

of it. And the idea of a soft DUP vote has always fascinated me. I know Newton has always argued that there are people who voted for the DUP because they had nowhere else to go.

So I'd be interested to hear what he says about that because this would certainly look as though it bears that out.

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