In his latest objection to the Brexit workaround for Northern Ireland, Boris Johnson is struggling to come to terms with the hard divorce from the EU which he so relentlessly pursued

The new DUP leader knows very well that his demands to abolish the Northern Ireland protocol are utterly unrealistic

From the brutal ousting of his predecessor to his bungling of the Irish language issue, Edwin Poots’s brief reign as DUP leader was a litany of blunders

Edwin Poots, the new DUP party leader, does not want to be First Minister in the Assembly, and his nominee Paul Givan’s main qualification for the job would appear to be that he is a Poots sidekick of long standing

The party’s new leader has endured a brutally tough start to his tenure, with resignations and walkouts the order of the day

Edwin Poots is caught between a rock and a hard place on the Northern Ireland protocol – and his party could find itself marginalised as a consequence

Edwin Poots’s father was a founding member of the DUP. Jeffrey Donaldson followed his father into the ranks of the UDR and jumped to the DUP from the UUP. Both are members of the Orange Order and don‘t hide their religious beliefs. But can either man come up with a viable vision for the future of the North?

The fall of the DUP leader is a cautionary tale of hubris, myopia and stubbornness

Thanks to a shameful and dangerous lack of political leadership, mistrust and division is rife in unionism – to everybody’s cost

The decision not to prosecute Sinn Féin members who breached Covid-19 restrictions at the funeral of republican Bobby Storey last summer has further fuelled public outrage

The party’s advertising blitz in the American media is part of an attempt to shape the narrative around a referendum on unity

A disingenuous and ill-advised legal wrangle will only highlight the fact that Northern Ireland is a place apart

If the beleaguered party thinks Boris Johnson is going to ride to its rescue, it is mistaken

Unusually frank statements by the former chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne reveal how many senior British public figures see the North as irrelevant and reunification as inevitable

Rather than admit it made a monumental mistake which will cost the North dearly, the party shamelessly denies any culpability for the mess

The continued smearing of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane’s reputation suggests that unionist politicians feel Britain can engage in terrorism without any erosion of moral authority

The coronavirus crisis should prompt us to deal with the chronic lack of cooperation between health services on this island. Instead, it has sparked a few Zoom calls

Comment: With the North’s civil service in disarray and in need of reform, no one has been appointed to take the job in hand. But maybe the DUP and Sinn Féin like it that way

Arlene Foster survived the ‘cash for ash’ scandal, but she is facing challenges from within the DUP, partly because of perceived arrogance and her unwillingness to listen to senior party members’ advice

There is still work to be done, and we need a leader like Hume for the next phase of this island’s future