I was never a fan of Trimble and this week showed why

Instead of hyping up an unfinished agreement at lunchtime last Monday on the national airwaves, Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney might instead have been better occupied listening to the radio. Minutes before he announced that a deal would be revealed an hour later, one of the more virulent Brexiteers, the former Northern Ireland first minister David Trimble, was venting his spleen against the plan on the BBC World at One.

He may have shared the Nobel Peace Price with John Hume in 1998 but I’ve long regarded Trimble as one of the more dislikeable and hardline unionists.

I first met him in 1995 when I was a cub reporter in RTÉ. On the election trail in Coleraine, I approached the newly elected unionist leader for a quick radio interview. Trimble turned on me when I said that I was from RTÉ, berating me about the treachery of ‘your government in the South’. Despite being the only journalist there, having travelled from Dublin, he refused to give me a quick interview and told me to be gone. Dr Ian Paisley, whom I interviewed shortly afterwards, was Paddington Bear compared to Trimble.

I bumped into Trimble again three years later when he and John Hume were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway. The Hume delegation were like a wedding party, good humoured and welcoming. Trimble’s small group were like a family gathered for the funeral. As he fled past me in Oslo, I didn’t risk his wrath again by congratulating him on the prestigious award.

It was Trimble who first scuppered Monday’s deal. He declared on the BBC at one o’clock on Monday that the proposed deal was a ‘thoroughly bad idea’. He added that he ‘was shocked, I am scratching my head, this will be very bad for business in Northern Ireland’.

Alarm bells rang everywhere except Dublin where our politicians were busy hyping a non-existent deal and teaching Donal Tusk how to say ‘ní neart go cur le chéile’.

The deal was dead in the water – an hour later Arlene Foster scuppered the plan in a speech that could have been written by Baron Trimble, now a member of the Conservative Party. By Friday a fudge had been agreed that bizarrely everyone welcomed – all sides claimed ownership! We have a new Friday agreement and every side says it’s good. They all claim to ‘protect the 1998 Good Friday Agreement’, but ignore the fact that the main structure that agreement built, a government in Northern Ireland, hasn’t existed for nearly a year.

The EU seems to believe that there is a prospect of a return to violence over the border. The only threat, as we saw this week, comes from a few ex-Provo headbangers who seem to believe that planting a bomb in Glasnevin cemetery is a blow for freedom.

Friday’s agreement, as the Taoiseach said, is the ‘end of the beginning’ – but listening to the DUP and their allies this week it is clear it is not. As Arlene Foster said on Friday: ‘Our support will depend on the final deal , our reservations will be revisited.’

The DUP said ‘no’ on Monday, ‘maybe’ on Friday but they could say ‘no’ again, and again. They haven’t gone away you know.

We need to focus on the unionist community in the North to convince them of the benefits of sticking together. It’s times like this we need moderate voices on the island.