Unionism 2010: Does it really matter who gets to be ‘titular head’?

I have a piece coming out in the News Letter’s series on Unionism 2021, although I am not sure when. All contributors have five questions to answer, the final one asking whether Martin McGuinness would be acceptable as a First Minister.

Perhaps surprisingly Paisley senior accepts the prospect with some equinimity, but not without a little dig at his successor, “Sinn Fein didn’t become the majority party on my watch.”

Without giving too much away, my own take is that Unionists have more important things to worry about and that “achieving good governance is a great deal more important than who gets to hold the largely titular office of ‘head honcho’”.

With the NI Water story we have had a passing glimpse inside the machinery of government and it is far from impressive. There needs to be a decisive shift away from the things of ‘war’ to the concerns of ‘peacetime’.

Today’s contribution comes from David Vance, who worries not about Northern Ireland’s Britishness, but that of the UK as a whole

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