Mr. Jonathan Powell:

The Senator need not worry about that. It is basically a difference between trying to build something over a long period, devoting real political capital and effort to building trust, building understanding, establishing an inclusive process and ending a problem that has blighted our islands for generations and casually destroying something through vandalism for no purpose. What they are doing is going to solve precisely nothing. We are going to end up back in negotiations at some stage. In the meantime, however, we will have trashed our reputation, we will have serious political problems in Northern Ireland and we may even have provoked some violence. It is completely pointless. It is without any political purpose other than survival inside the Conservative Party, and it is enormously destructive to our bilateral relations with Ireland, the EU and the US. It makes me despair, to be honest.