“And that is the larger difficulty..”

Renewed speculation on a UK Department of the Regions is being discussed in earnest elsewhere, but at OpenDemocracy Robin Wilson has a particular assessment of the impending crisis involving Sinn Féin, the DUP, and those policing and justice powers. From the OpenDemocracy article

London and Dublin will renew pressure on the DUP in September, having lent on the Independent Monitoring Commission to produce an ‘ad hoc’ report that month which they hope will show the IRA has wound up its structure, having wound down its campaign. But the most senior Catholic policeman in Northern Ireland, Peter Sheridan, says this has yet to happen. And, indeed, with the current bemused mood among the ‘republican base’, and with the ‘dissident republicans’ gaining recruits, Gerry Adams and Mr McGuinness will have no desire to remove the last vestige of their authoritarian control—shaky even in west Belfast and south Armagh—or in so doing so to make finally clear, including to themselves, that no residual organisation is being retained for a political rainy day.

Pete Baker