SCOTLAND and Wales want a Good Friday Agreement-type mechanism for independence referendums.

That is the goal of the constitutional cooperation being promised by all three nationalist first ministers of the United Kingdom.

The SNP is quite open about this objective. Plaid Cymru says it only wants to set up a commission on independence in its first term, but there is little doubt it wants such a mechanism to be one of the commission’s recommendations.

While the Good Friday Agreement provides a mechanism, it does not specify what triggers it, other than the secretary of state considering a nationalist win “likely”.

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That will not be enough for Scotland and Wales. Scottish nationalists have discussed possible triggers for many years, although the SNP has so far declined to support any of the proposals.

A common suggestion is nationalist parties winning a majority of votes, as opposed to seats, in the Scottish parliament.

Mere discussion of these ideas in Britain will have an impact on Northern Ireland.

The Good Friday Agreement may never be amended to officially add triggers but in practice, anything Westminster recognises for Scotland and Wales will be seen as the method by which ‘likelihood’ should be judged.

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The UUP seems determined to reinvent itself as the political wing of the Ulster Farmers’ Union.

It never misses a chance to blame the crisis in Lough Neagh on NI Water, a line deflecting from agrifood’s far larger responsibility.

UUP deputy leader Diana Armstrong has submitted a question to Alliance environment minister Andrew Muir asking if he will introduce “a fee or permit system for access to the Mourne Mountains for walkers and recreational users as a means of managing visitor numbers”.

It is not walkers who have turned the Mournes into an ecological desert. Environmentalists use the term “sheep-wrecked” to describe how hill farming destroys the........

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