THE SPECTATOR'S ULSTER NOTEBOOK
Belfast
Brian Faulkner has settled himself nicely into Stormont Castle, the official, seat of the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Years ago 1 saw Lord Brookeborough there and, in recollection at least, the room where we had tea was dark greens and browns. About three years ago I talked with Captain O'Neill, now Lord O'Neill, and again I recall a dark room. Either I am wrong, or there has been some new decoration or a different sit- ting room is being used : at all events. Brian Faulkner's room was light and airy. The tea and biscuits were unchanged; and the crockery, too, I fancy.
A few weeks ago, almost immediately after he had become Prime Minister, Faulkner met a number of journalists for lunch at Claridge's. He seems to me, during the intervening time, to have become much more assured. He is a new kind of man for Stormont Castle: the old Etonian. Guards Officer, landed gentry, Anglo-Irish nature and style of his predecessors are replaced in him by a much more professional-seeming Politician's style, the style of a fixer, almost or a wheeler-dealer, a tough and a sharp style.
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