Ian Paisley

Mike Small (Fife, Guardian): The Council of the Isles meets in Belfast today for the first time since nationalists joined or led the governments of Scotland, Cymru and Northern Ireland. The Westminster Government probably sees it as a piece of baroque constitutional artifice, box-ticking for the extremities, a nod to the recalcitrant Celtic fringe. But for the host, Ian Paisley, the Council (as his predecessor David Trimble put it) "makes it possible for Unionists to contemplate an institutionalised relationship between Belfast and Dublin".