Stormont is already back yet for some reason a US special envoy to Northern Ireland has just been appointed

There have been significant links between Ulster and America since the early 1700s, before the US was even founded. The earliest surviving News Letters of 1738 and 39, which we serialised on their 280th anniversaries, in 2018 and 2019, include adverts for two of the earliest migrant boats from here to the then colonies.

After the US was established, Belfast had one of the earliest consulates of the new nation.

In theory a special envoy to Northern Ireland is a good thing. That Mick Mulvaney, a man of Irish American heritage, takes up that role having been acting chief of staff for President Donald Trump suggests that he is very well connected.

Mr Trump is, as the world well knows, his own man. He is less likely than any other recent incumbent of the White House to fall for any anti British sentiments in Washington.

That he has bailed out of the St Patrick’s Day lunch due to a spat with the Democratic Party speaker of the House of Representatives shows that Ireland is not high on his agenda.

Mr Trump’s enthusiastic support for Brexit will hardly have pleased the establishment in Dublin.

But why do we suddenly have a special envoy now? Stormont has been re-established, after Sinn Fein was granted its non negotiable demands, and so lifted its three-year veto.

Some prominent Americans who have previously had an official role in Northern Ireland have seemed unsympathetic to unionists. None have seemed so towards nationalists.

What the Province needs at this uncertain time is an unwavering assurance from the UK and Ireland that no one party will ever again be able to collapse devolution in pursuit of its own goals.

That key principle also needs moral support from third parties such as the EU and US.

Yet no such assurance is on the horizon, from anywhere.

Let us hope Mr Mulvaney will take a close enough interest in events here to identify that weakness in the system.