Throwback to terror may focus minds

STORM isn’t a verb that’s usually applied in relation to just one individual. But when loyalist killer Michael Stone stormed Stormont last night, there was a grisly precedent.

On March 16, 1998, Stone arrived at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast armed to the teeth with grenades and handguns. A huge crowd of republicans had gathered to bury the three IRA members killed by the SAS in Gibraltar.

Stone embarked on a one-man storming of the enemy in the must public way imaginable. Under the gaze of TV cameras he indiscriminately began lobbing grenades into, and shooting at, the crowd.