WHILE most people will sympathise over the dilemmas facing Chris Bryant, there is little in his CV which suggests he was ever qualified to take charge of a major political crisis which could result in the permanent collapse of the Stormont power-sharing structures.

Our new secretary of state did at least have a fairly diverse career before becoming an MP, working as a Church of England priest, an administrator with the Common Purpose charity, and finally as the slightly grandly-titled head of European affairs with the BBC.

However, his parliamentary career since he was first elected to a safe Welsh seat in 2001, in line with most of those who have arrived and departed from Hillsborough Castle over the last 20 years, has largely been conducted on the fringes of the main debates.

It is all inevitably a far cry from the days when Westminster front benchers were regularly dispatched here, with an obvious example being Mo Mowlam, who was Labour’s shadow northern secretary of state before being appointed to the corresponding portfolio in government.

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Under intense pressure, she allowed the Orange Order to go down the Garvaghy Road in Portadown in 1997, came to regard it as a mistake, and was instrumental in creating the Parades Commission and rerouting the........

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