“delivering a shared future [for] those who issued death threats [and] attacked home of colleagues”

An interesting debate on Sunday Sequence this morning. Just after the nine o’clock news, William Crawley chaired a discussion between Naomi Long, Alex Kane and Danny Morrison. [Debate starts 34 minutes into the programme.]

Points raised about the kind of parties that did not emerge following the Good Friday Agreement, whether there was a lack of political imagination, what moving on can feel like.

The conversation finished with Naomi Long being asked about the personal impact of the last week. She talked about her faith and said:

My belief is that regardless of the intimidation, regardless of the threats, what we are doing is an important job. What we are doing in terms of defending democracy can’t simply be moved because of threats. So it will not change my views. It will not change the views of my party.

And it will not stop us being focussed on trying to deliver a shared future for everyone. And I include within that those who issued the death threats against me, and those who have attacked the homes of my colleagues. Because they’re as much party of our future as anyone else in Northern Ireland. And we’ve got to try and bring them on board to the political process.

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