The political A to Z of 2020 in Northern Ireland

From a deal that ended political deadlock at Stormont to dealing with a global pandemic, 2020 has been a busy year for NI politics.

Here is my alphabetic run-down of the last 12 months in politics.

Is there anything the company cannot deliver?

In November it seemed intent on delivering a United Ireland - to the great amusement of many.

Amazon apologised after stumbling into a political debate on Twitter on the status of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom.

The most Irish US president since (fill in your own special favourite here) duly dispatched Donald Trump.

Lots of politicians north and south of the border rubbed their hands in glee - unless they were called Sammy Wilson, Ian Paisley, or Paul Girvan who were photographed with a Trump flag outside Westminster before the election.

The president-elect had already laid down a marker threatening there would be no US trade deal with the UK if the Anglo-Irish Agreement became "a casualty of Brexit".

A word most of hadn't even heard of at the start of the year came to dominate everything and everyone, destroying lives and stopping life as we knew it.

Politics, health, business, hospitality, sport, the arts - nothing escaped.

A new lexicon appeared overnight: lockdown, social-distancing, contact-tracing, quarantine, self-isolate, bubbling - and, of course, the all-important "R" number and now, thankfully, a vaccine.

The trouble with Twitter is that it allows you to think out loud when sometimes those thoughts would be better kept to oneself.

It was during a budget debate - telling in itself - that Sinn Féin MLA Carál Ní Chuilín took to Twitter to complain that Ulster Unionist Roy Beggs had been "speaking non-stop".

"I can tell I'm not the only MLA who akins his droning voice to fingernails trailing down a blackboard," she wrote, in a subsequently deleted tweet.

New Decade New Approach should have been the story of the year.

Instead, thanks to Covid (see C), it had to be content with a supporting role, or not as the case sometimes was.

The deal saw devolution restored after three long years.

Back then the many obvious challenges didn't include a pandemic but very soon New Approach was overtaken by the "new normal".

Still, how would we have coped without a five-party mandatory coalition to twist itself into contortions over lockdown, restrictions and personal protective equipment (PPE)? Moot point.

Nobody said it would be easy but it didn't have to be so difficult at times (see N for Numbskulls).

The funeral of veteran republican Bobby Storey shattered the already fragile executive unity in the fight against coronavirus.

Several Sinn Féin leaders stood accused of breaching the regulations they had helped draw up.

It lead to First Minister Arlene Foster withdrawing from the daily Stormont press briefings over the summer until Michelle O'Neill acknowledged the public health message had been "undermined".

It was lockdown in the Republic of Ireland yet a bunch of people including politicians, the odd EU commissioner, a top judge and a media icon thought it was a good idea to join 80 others at a Dáil parliamentary golf society dinner in deepest Connemara.

The fall-out was political carnage, costing the jobs of the agriculture minister, EU Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan, and calls for the judge to step down.

Nobel Peace prize winner, founding member of the SDLP and one of the most important players in the peace process, John Hume died at the age of 83.

By coincidence another major SDLP figure Seamus Mallon passed away in January.

In many ways, they were chalk and cheese, differing about many things, particularly the Hume-Adams talks.

But together - and apart - their contribution to politics in Northern Ireland is incalcuable.

As a bizarre side note, Hollywood actress Sharon Stone turned up in Belfast City Hall to sign Mr Mallon's book of condolence.

The government once again ruled out a public inquiry into the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane in Belfast 31 years ago.

His widow Geraldine called it "another added insult" but unionists welcomed it.

In March, NI Secretary Brandon Lewis (see L) announced new proposals which would see the vast majority of almost 2,000 unsolved murder cases closed permanently with new legislation preventing them ever being reopened. It was seen as a way of protecting Army veterans from future prosecutions.

No year is complete without an e-mail faux pas.

Step forward the ever newsworthy Ian Paisley who instead of just responding to a member of the public who had e-mailed MPs about contact tracing replied to hundreds of his parliamentary colleagues saying, "Mate, I wouldn't let any government, least of all the NI Executive, track and trace my movements."

He later said the comments were "jocular", adding "Hope you saw the funny side of that. Ian."

Not everyone did.

Lord Kilclooney is no stranger to Twitter trouble.

But this time it went around the world after he referred to US vice-president-elect Kamala Harris as "the Indian".

The Speaker of the House of Lords lead the condemnation telling him to "retract and apologise". He agreed to withdraw the remark.

For months the new NI Secretary Brandon Lewis gave every impression of being the type of minister who, if he saw a sound bite coming, would cross to the other side of the road.

But then he went and told a shocked House of Commons that the government's Internal Market Bill would "break international law".

It had already been heavily criticised by the EU, many members of Mr Lewis' own party and, in the US, by the Democrats (see B for Biden) .

His admission did not exactly pour oil on troubled Irish Sea waters.

In December, the controversial clauses in the bill were withdrawn after the UK Government and the EU reached agreement on the Brexit divorce deal.

Another former Ulster Unionist peer in big trouble was Lord Maginnis who was suspended from the House of Lords for at least 18 months over claims of bullying and harassment and using "homophobic and offensive language".

He admitted becoming "cross" when asked for his security pass in Westminster explaining he was in pain because of arthritis.

SNP MP Hannah Bardell told the House of Commons it was "one of the worst cases of abuse of security staff" she had witnessed.

At the time, The Huffington Post website quoted Lord Maginnis as saying in response: "Queers like Ms Bardell don't particularly annoy me."

She later said she had received death threats after making the statement.

Lord Maginnis was ordered to take "behaviour training" but said he would be refusing to do so.

Frustration at how the executive deals with the pandemic - and in particular the mixed messaging - has grown.

Hotelier Bill Wolsey labelled them "a coalition government run by numbskulls". It stuck.

The Multiple Sclerosis Society apologised after a tweet calling on people to "turn the streets of Belfast orange" drew comparisons to Orange Order parades.

They asked people to wear orange, the charity's brand colour, in a tweet that was swiftly removed.

DUP Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots broke cover to say he had "grave reservations" over lockdown restrictions that he helped pass just a few days earlier.

But it was what he said in a UTV interview that really caused a storm.

He claimed that the difference in transmission between nationalist and unionist areas was "around six to one" because of the example set at Bobby Storey's funeral.

Mr Poots was accused of making Covid-19 sectarian.

He later said that he has not "at any time" attributed the spread of Covid-19 to religious affiliations.

In December, he became the first executive minister to test positive for the virus.

Sinn Féin lost one MLA, one former MP and two party officials over the failure to return, in time, £10,000 payments wrongly received from a Stormont emergency Covid fund.

It was highly embarrassing for the party at a time when so many are struggling from the economic devastation caused by this crisis.

The Executive Committee Functions Bill was unlikely to set journalists' hearts racing - until, that is, a former DUP special adviser warned it overturned safeguards negotiated in the St Andrews Agreement to stop ministers taking decisions without referral.

It still passed but an unprecedented 11 DUP MLAs rebelled by abstaining on the vote thereby turning the spotlight once again on how strong was Arlene Foster's position as party leader.

Who hasn't done a bit of online shopping during a boring meeting?

DUP MLA Alex Easton would probably have got away with the indiscretion during the assembly health committee had some eagle-eyed observer not spotted him.

He later apologised and sent the BBC a photograph of his shoes with a hole in the sole pointing out the shops were closed because of lockdown.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word but Sinn Féin MLA Martina Anderson just about shades it this year after she tweeted that the Troubles pension was mainly for those who took part in "Britain's dirty war in Ireland" and would mostly go to "those involved in collusion".

The tweet was deleted and she apologised "unreservedly" any hurt caused. Her party also made it clear that they were not amused.

It's not every day the Orange Order pulls off a PR masterstroke.

But fair play for inviting the hirsute 80s rock icon Jon Bon Jovi to visit its headquarters after he claimed U2 frontman Bono lived in fear of Orangemen walking through his neighbourhood in Dublin saying "get the Catholic kid and beat him up".

"I didn't have any of that kind of turmoil in suburban New Jersey," said Mr Jovi.

Er, neither did Bono growing up in suburban north Dublin.

When Robin Swann became health minister in January, he knew life was going to change but writing for the rock magazine Rolling Stone probably wasn't on his mind.

Yet that's what he did after he criticised Northern Ireland's grumpiest singer Sir Van Morrison for writing a series of anti-lockdown songs.

Mr Swann is unlikely to think any more favourably of veteran DUP MP Sammy Wilson.

As well as referring to face masks as "muzzles" he suggested the health minister focused on other pressing medical problems rather than giving the impression that venturing out posed a near-risk of "immediate death" from coronavirus.

He also called the chair of the British Medical Association, Dr Tom Black, a "well heeled doctor" after he criticised the executive for easing lockdown restrictions.

Oh, and he was photographed more than once not wearing a mask.

Sinn Féin MLA John O'Dowd caused controversy on two fronts when he labelled Boris Johnson's government "a shire of bastards" over their handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Firstly, for the rather unparliamentary language.

But secondly, and more importantly, shouldn't it have been a "shower" in common parlance?

Farewell 2020. You will not be missed.

Remember when real people, er, actually met. And shook hands. And hugged.

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