There were many tributes paid to David Ervine yesterday. The PUP leader had a great deep-burr voice for oratory and a gift for phrase-making and for fancy metaphor. In the end, he was the party's only representative in the Assembly. But where he came from, where he wanted to bring loyalism to, were both pivotal in allowing us in the South understand the layers that lay behind the 'not an inch' rhetoric.
The most poignant tribute, in my estimation, was the simple statement issued by his own party: “Unionism has lost the most progressive voice of this generation. Politics has lost a statesman. Our peace process has lost its most optimistic advocate and Ulster has lost a devoted son."
Concise. Spot on. Wonderful.