by RuthDE | Aug 15, 2025 | 2025, August, Belfast News Letter, Journalism
As my friend David Trimble’s wife Daphne and I agreed – laughingly – when I reported to her something fantastically tactless he had said to someone I’d introduced him to, “David isn’t a people person”. Published: 14 August 2025 But as I got to know him...
by RuthDE | Apr 2, 2024 | 2024, April, Belfast News Letter, Journalism
What a week it has been! The most urgent question is how to steady the political ship after disconcerting revelations about the two biggest parties in Northern Ireland politics. Published: 2 April 2024 The shock of Sir Jeffrey Donaldson being charged with historical...
by RuthDE | Mar 7, 2023 | 2023, Belfast News Letter, Journalism, March
My first instinct on hearing of the Windsor Framework, the deal Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reached with the EU, was tremendous relief. Published: 7 March 2023 Until then I could see no way out of the terrible mess we were in. Unionists had few friends and were...
by RuthDE | Aug 3, 2022 | 2022, Daily Mail, Journalism, July
RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS pays tribute to a humble colossus of peace Published: 26 July 2022 My long and close friendship with David Trimble began in 1985 at yet another conference lamenting the sorry state of Northern Ireland. A friend and I decided to alleviate the...
by RuthDE | May 4, 2022 | 2022, Daily Telegraph, Journalism, May
Over-excited nationalists will say otherwise, but whatever happens on Thursday, the country will not unite in our lifetime Published: 3 May 2020 If the pollsters have got it right, by the weekend, although unionists will almost certainly have scored more votes than...
by RuthDE | Jan 19, 2022 | 2022, Belfast News Letter, January, Journalism
“What Kate Hoey says is not terribly important,” sneered Susan McKay in the Irish Times, after the furore over Hoey’s forthright foreword to the Unionist Voice Policy Studies report, Vetoing the Protocol: Restoring Cross-Community Consent Protections. Published: 18...
by RuthDE | Jan 11, 2022 | 2022, Belfast News Letter, January, Journalism
My apologies to Professor Colin Harvey of Ireland’s Future, an organisation whose mission is ‘Paving the way to the reunification of the island’. Published: 11 January 2022 When just before the New Year I wrote my annual list of people I would like to send to a desert...
by RuthDE | Sep 3, 2021 | 2021, Daily Telegraph, Journalism, September
Can the leader of the moderate Ulster Unionist Party arrest the demoralisation caused by the NI Protocol and a weak justice system? Published: 2 September 2021 There is movement afoot in Northern Irish politics. After years of a dispiriting stalemate, with two...
by RuthDE | Jun 21, 2021 | 2021, Daily Telegraph, Journalism, June
As polls show many voters rejecting tribalism, the two main Unionist parties are likely to be devising a joint strategy Published: 19 June 2021 It’s easy to laugh at Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party: its followers are almost all Christian and socially...
by RuthDE | Jun 7, 2021 | 2021, Daily Telegraph, Journalism, June
With goodwill, there is a solution that avoids a hard border either on land or in the sea Published: 5 June 2021 The briefing war between the EU and the UK led to headlines this week saying that Brexit Minister Lord Frost thinks the Northern Ireland Protocol is...
