If you had to pick one theme to capture the politics of the past year, you could make a very strong case for change.

2024 is littered with examples of real substantive change.

There was change at Stormont in January when the Devolution Project got up and running again.

At Westminster, the tectonic plate shifted when the Labour Party triumphed in July's general election.

There was substantive change too in political leadership with a sudden...onic plate shifted when the Labour Party triumphed in July's general election.

There was substantive change too in political leadership with a sudden and unexpected end to the career of the DUP's Geoffrey Donaldson,

with the Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP and Alliance, also caught up in a wider game of musical chairs.

There's a change coming to in Washington after November's presidential election. Donald Trump went from being yesterday's man to tomorrow's man overnight, and that could have serious

implications for a lot of people, including here on the island of Ireland. And then finally,

change was also an issue in December's general election in the Republic, most notably, of course,

because there wasn't any,

it didn't really happen. So that's a sense of how our conversation might go in the course of the

next hour or thereabouts on this Red Lines Review of the Year. And with me, to reflect on the

ups and downs of the past 12 months, are five familiar friends of the show, the political editor

of the Belfast Telegraph,

Suzanne Breen,

Professor Dirdre Heenan from Ulster University,

the columnist and commentator Newton Emerson,

the comedian Tim McGarry,

and BBC Northern Ireland political correspondent,

Gareth Gordon.

So welcome one and all, and happy Christmas.

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