Strange bedfellows as the SDLP and UUP snuggle up

Can an unlikely mixed marriage of two battered parties revitalise the North’s tired old politics?

Mike Nesbitt: “Vote Colum and me, and you get a whole new middle ground politics, dedicated to making Northern Ireland work, whatever our different motivations.” Pic: Getty

It was supposed to be an unremarkable Ulster Unionist Party conference. But but then politics in the North has always been iconoclastic and unpredictable, to put it mildly.

Last week, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader Colum Eastwood addressed the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) conference. And he wasn’t just bringing fraternal greetings and making a courtesy call.

He spoke about the beginnings of a new political relationship between the two parties, ...