Paisley's calmer note

Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland's current first minister and sometime MEP, was once known around Brussels as a rabble-rouser, having famously branded the previous Pope John Paul II “the Antichrist” during a speech the pontiff made to Parliament in 1988. Last week (10 January) standing next to José Manuel Barroso, Commission president, he sounded a calmer note. “Things are different now we have an ear in high places,” he said. Things were indeed different as Paisley, once the sworn enemy of Irish republicanism, stood next to his deputy first minister Martin McGuinness, former chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and junior minister Gerry Kelly, who was imprisoned for a bombing campaign in the UK. What has not changed, though, are the attitudes to the European Union of Paisley and McGuinness's political parties, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin. Both may have grovelled before Barroso for EU money and support for Northern Ireland, but Sinn Féin will campaign for a ‘No' vote to the Lisbon treaty in the Irish Republic's referendum. Meanwhile the DUP continues to play to the Eurosceptic gallery in the UK by joining the call for a referendum there.