Even though growth in the UK economy has slowed a lot since the Brexit referendum vote in June 2016, the Bank of England pushed ahead with a rate increase at last week’s meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee.

Financial markets are not expecting any increase in UK rates in the coming 12 months despite a pick-up in inflation to 2.9%.

Nationalists and republicans need to adopt a new approach to convince unionists of the merits of uniting Ireland, Gerry Adams has said.