Dr. Stephen Farry:

I will start with Senator Black's questions. I thank her for her comments. On Alliance attitudes, I will be open and frank in responding to this. Our party very much bought into the wider vision of the Good Friday Agreement. We saw that as delivering power-sharing inside Northern Ireland, equality and human rights but also the wider context of the North-South and east-west relationships, the close relations between the British and Irish Governments to open borders. In that context, we felt while we respected people having different constitutional aspirations we saw the pace of demand for change not being that acute. People were working in that context and it was a fairly benign place to be, given the wider divisions in Northern Ireland. Frankly, Brexit blew all that up. It was like a knife through that settlement, and in a situation that only really worked through sharing and interdependence, it was forcing new divisions. Wherever you drew that line on a map was always going to cause some degree of friction to someone's sense of identity. Many Alliance members and indeed voters, especially the younger ones, have responded to that and now see their future in a much more open way. That does not mean they are actively seeking a united Ireland but they are, shall we say, more uncertain as to where the future would be. Added to that, and of course it is related very heavily to Brexit, is that there is a major reaction against the nature of the Government in the UK, which they see as a hard-right government. It is not popular in Northern Ireland. Before he left office, Boris Johnson's Government was getting 5% approval rates in Northern Ireland. I dread to think what Liz Truss is getting, given she is polling even worse.