Protests took place across Northern Ireland on Tuesday under the slogan ‘We Deserve Better’ with the intention of pressurising Stormont’s politicians to reach an agreement to restore the Assembly. Marking 589 days since the collapse of devolved government here, on Northern Slant Lisa Whitten voiced her frustration with the current political situation in the article: Unenvied, unrecognised, lingering victors. Also this week, hotelier Bill Wolsey told The Belfast Telegraph that he was pausing a £16m refurbishment on Belfast’s Merchant Hotel and will not be investing in anything else here until difficulties around Brexit and not having a government are solved.

Sinn Féin called for the closure of the Renewable Heating Incentive (RHI) scheme. In the party’s response to a public consultation on the future of RHI, it said the scheme is “fundamentally flawed”. Sinn Féin MLA Conor Murphy stated: “The RHI is not a good scheme that went wrong, it’s a bad scheme that was made even worse. Spending more public money on a scheme which was at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive to the goal of carbon reduction could not be justified.” A public inquiry into scheme will resume this week with former DUP MLA and minister Jonathan Bell due to be a witness.

Prime Minister Theresa May insisted that there will not be a second Brexit referendum, adding she won’t be forced into watering down her Chequers exit plans during negotiations with the European Union. Writing in The Sunday Telegraph she claimed that a second vote would be a “gross betrayal of our democracy and trust.” On the same day, former Brexit minister David Davis told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that he will vote against any deal with the EU that’s based on Mrs May’s Chequers agreement, he said it would be “worse than staying in” the EU. Also this week, Mrs May travelled to South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya signalling renewed British political and economic interest in Africa.On Northern Slant this week, Fionnbharr Rodgers shared the article on Brexit: Ignorance is bliss: [Conservative MP] Jacob Rees-Mogg and the Irish border.

Long-serving Labour Party MP Frank Field quit the party’s Westminster group over what he described as the party’s “tolerance” of anti-Semitism and a “culture of nastiness”. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell told The New Statesman magazine he is “worried and saddened” about the prospect of Labour splitting over the anti-Semitism row, saying he wanted to avoid a split “at all costs” and would be happy to talk to unhappy MPs. Former Labour Home Secretary Lord Blunkett took to The Daily Telegraph to urge a rethink of “the so-called Corbyn project” and to “belatedly get its act together.”

Former US presidential nominee and war veteran John McCain died after a year-long battle with brain cancer, at the age of 81. A memorial service was held in Washington on Saturday to which the sitting US President, Donald Trump, was not invited. At the beginning of the service McCain’s daughter Meghan shared what has widely been interpreted as a clear denunciation of Mr Trump’s politics. She stated: “We gather to mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who’ll never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.”

Also published on Medium.