I was invited to a reception last night at the Northern Ireland Executive’s representative office in Brussels, theoretically to mark its official opening (though in fact they moved to that address a year ago, and I myself organised an event in their premises in September). There were about 200 people there, including my good friend Stephen Farry, who had come over specially for the event as a member of the committee which scrutinises the First Minister and Deputy First Minister; I spent most of the evening talking to him. Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness made introductory speeches, and then José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, announced that he was reviving a Northern Ireland-specific economic taskforce, in one of the better speeches I have heard from him, though he didn’t stick around afterwards.

Slightly to my surprise I recognised one tall bloke leaning against a pillar on his own as Tom Elliott, the new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. I introduced myself, and he reminded me that we had corresponded about election results in Fermanagh many years ago (I had completely forgotten). I teased him about his decision to run three candidates in Upper Bann in next year’s elections, where by my count he will be fortunate to keep both seats; he explained the logic behind that decision – for which he took full responsibility – to me, and I can understand it even if I don’t agree with it. We also discussed another topic which I will cover in an unlocked post (this is locked to friends who I trust to be discreet). I came away slightly more impressed than I had expected to be; Elliott is I think too narrowly focussed on the internal dynamics of his own party, but he will develop them fairly well, and there is a good argument that to get a sustainable recovery if the political wind should ever start blowing in his favour again he will have to get the nots and bolts right first.

I then managed to catch Peter Robinson, who I have met a few times previously (most notably we were at a conference together in the Netherlands in 1994, and I later advised him informally about an early DUP website in 1996). He was looking pretty drained and complained that he had had two days of non-stop meetings in Brussels, with no break and still a formal dinner to endure. He also grumbled that Sinn Féin keep putting forward unreasonable proposals for new taxes; I was unaware that the Northern Ireland Assembly had the power to put a special tax on phone masts, but this obviously falls into the category of SF proposals that Robinson has described in public as “completely off the wall”.

Finally, with Stephen’s help, I managed to catch a few words with Martin McGuinness before he and Robinson were swept off for the official dinner. This was actually quite a big thing for me; when I was most active in the process, Sinn Féin was largely out of it, and when they were in I was too junior to attend meetings, so the only SF activist I know particularly well is their MEP Bairbre de Brún, and that is because she taught me French at school (she was “Miss Brown” then). (And there are a couple of others who I’ve had phone or email contact with.) Slightly to my surprise McGuinness immediately identified me as the person behind the elections website, and claimed to be “genuinely delighted” to have met me. Which I must say made me feel rather less like a politics fanboy trying to tick all the boxes of important Northern Irish figures who I have met. But maybe that’s what makes him a good politician.