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What’s the world coming to? DUP member gives approval for PSNI to train Libyan police; DUP minister says “whoever made the decision is living on another planet”.

Catholic Church leaders say laity needs increased role in the Church; Catholic bishop says volunteer school governors can serve only if they agree with infallibility of the hierarchy.

The SDLP says ‘we will lead a better executive’ but the leader says ‘not with me at helm’. Talk about being on message.

The DUP is polishing its electoral knuckle-dusters; the bishops are dusting down their croziers and the SDLP is going back and forth, like Blackadder.

The results of the European elections have clearly scared the DUP horses. Paisley’s boast he would take on ‘all comers’ in North Antrim seems just that. Despite his battle cry, the old war horse, like Scrooge with Marley, is probably being tormented in his sleep by the ghost of the late Cecil Walker, who imploded during a TV debate when his all too apparent old age left him looking like a candidate for a retirement home rather than the House of Commons. While Paisley snr may still shade an election for personal reasons (not least because some Catholics may vote tactically for him), a close-run election would leave one of the safest DUP seats looking like low-hanging fruit.

Yet the Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister does not appear to have the machinery to pull off a major coup against the DUP.

Some of his members are mavericks who use the revolving door of right-wing unionism to enter and depart fringe unionism at whim.

Do the number crunchers in the DUP think that Allister has further reach within their base? If they do, moving to the right will not help their appeal to mainstream unionism.

Sir Reg Empey is playing a high-risk strategy with his link-up with the Tories or more particularly riding the Cameron meteor. Northern Irish or indeed Irish politics has never sat comfortably within the normal right/left divide of British or European politics. Naturally, the Ulster Unionists will say that they are only restoring the link that once was Unionist and Conservative. Sir Reg is gambling on more than that.

A key argument in convincing unionists to enter a power-sharing arrangement either in the Good Friday Agreement or at St Andrews, particularly with Sinn Fein, was the demonstrable security of Northern Ireland within the Union and, for Sir Reg some 10 years on, the Good Friday Agreement should now be able to withstand this east-west move.

Also Sir Reg is betting that with Conservative cash behind him and weariness about Labour, there will be a Cameron bounce. And there will, especially if the latter and his senior front bench spend more time in Northern Ireland between now and next May.

The fly in the ointment remains North Down MP Sylvia Hermon.

Of course the Tories/Ulster Unionists, like the TUV, have to find credible and exciting new candidates if they are to upset the DUP apple cart.

While Jim Nicholson did well in the EU elections, it was quite an uphill struggle with only a lick of bright blue paint to spare his blushes over the Tory campaign message – ‘time for change’.

The elections proved that with Tory resources, the UUP has a fighting chance to regain ground.

A high point for the new arrangement is the Conservatives’ decision to fight all seats. At last a pro-Union party is making a serious break with the old sectarianism that led to unedifying pacts within unionism that signalled nothing more than bigotry and a jaded sense of Protestant supremacy.

That Sinn Fein, despite its claims of modernity, still clings to the sectarian and majoritarian notion of bloc identity votes and nationalist pacts is a sad reflection of its herd-like view of the northern Catholic electorate. Where does Sinn Fein see its nonsensical arguments fitting in with a new Ireland?

It’s difficult to see the how the unsurprising defection of Ian Parsley will positively affect the Ulster Unionist/Tory platform, especially if the plan is to run him as a Tory against Lady Hermon as an Ulster Unionist.

The surprise announcement of Mark Durkan’s postdated resignation tempts fate for him personally and the SDLP politically as it tries to mock the old political adage that says ‘once you say you are going, you are gone’. For some it may be reminiscent of a very long political suicide note.

There is a testing political period ahead for all parties. Perhaps the DUP may yet field a Catholic bishop as a candidate.