Hello and welcome to the Political Party.

Daily this episode features the leader of the STLP column Eastwood who I interviewed in

his office at Stormont which in itself was an amazing experience to go to Northern Ireland

and go to this building I've never been before.

It's amazing building on a hill, beautiful symmetrical views down into Belfast and obviously

a tragedy that this amazing place isn't being used properly at the moment but it's not

to column about so many things about Northern Irish politics but began by asking him about

the results of the last election when the STLP lost its three Westminster seats and

whether it was over simplistic to say that they'd been squeezed out by the DUP in Shimmafay.

No that's about right. What happened the last time was Stormont had collapsed. The politics

here was very very poisonous as if it ever isn't but it was particularly bad at that stage.

There was a real mood within nationalism to punish the DUP and it was kind of felt that

that stage that the best way to do that was to vote for Shimmafay and that that was

the strongest vote against the DUP. We argued against that and actually what Andrew

Robby was facilitating the DUP to be basically on their own representing us in Westminster.

But that was largely what happened. Things very very polarized across community voting,

I turned out but mostly kind of the DUP got a huge vote, Shimmafay and the huge vote and

everybody else was basically squeezed. I think all of that is settled. There's a different

kind of polarized politics now but it doesn't quite as raw as it was and I think people

now are thinking more about Brexit and how that impacts in terms of this election.

In terms of the Brexit effect on the politics of Northern Ireland and those traditional relationships

between unist parties and their voters and nationalist parties and their voters, does Brexit

...