Bagehot: An old man who's not in a hurry

摘要

Someone who has laboured long and hard to achieve a final settlement between the warring parties in Northern Ireland likens the peace process to the old Irish weather forecast: "If you can't see the top of the mountain, it's raining; if you can, it means it's about to rain." That said, as three days of supposedly last-chance negotiations to restore devolution got under way at St Andrews in Fife on October 11th, the political weather seemed to-be set as fair as it ever gets in that damp and misty province.