Politics & Power Quote by Peter Hain

Diplomacy loves the soft-focus adjective, and "very good" is doing heavy lifting here. Peter Hain isn’t offering a memoiristic detail about pleasant conversation; he’s issuing a calibrated signal flare meant to be heard well beyond the room. In Northern Ireland politics, where language is a proxy battlefield, the public report of "very good meetings" is less about warmth than about manageability: the DUP, Ian Paisley, and "his team" are being framed as responsible interlocutors rather than immovable ideologues.

The phrasing works because it’s strategically bland. "Meetings" implies process, not breakthrough; "very good" suggests momentum without committing to specifics that could collapse under scrutiny. It reassures multiple audiences at once. To unionists, it flatters status and seriousness: you’re central to the deal, not an obstacle to be routed around. To nationalists and the wider public, it projects governmental competence: the hard men are at the table, the state is in control. To international observers and nervous markets, it sells stability with a minimum of detail.

Name-checking "Ian Paisley" matters. Paisley wasn’t just any party leader; he was the symbol of a kind of thunderous resistance politics. By pairing him with the managerial "team", Hain subtly recasts a larger-than-life figure into a negotiable institution. The subtext: we can do business with these people, and if we can do business with them, a settlement is no longer a fantasy but an administrative horizon.