My Dad died two days before Christmas. I was on my way up to see him when I got a missed call and a text from my brother telling me he’d passed away. He had pancreatic cancer. The time between diagnosis and death is often short. Before you’ve had time to wrap your head around the fact that your loved one is ill, they are gone. The shock of the loss is as sharp and painful as the grief. How …
As the Great Anniversary approaches, unionist opinion in its supporting press is in turmoil over whether or when to return to the Assembly. Worryingly there is talk of being resigned to loyalist violence in the event of a border poll. Opinion is tilting against accepting the Windsor Framework. Its gaps and deficiencies are forensically taken apart in the Belfast Telegraph by Sam McBride. In the Newsletter, the voice of sceptical unionism, the editor Ben Lowry comes down against the Framework …
If you object to any trace of the EU in Northern Ireland future affairs, look away now. Even Lord Frost who delivered the discredited Protocol isn’t quite with you. Sunak’s deal will help he admits “but it’s a bitter pill to swallow”. Whereas Sunak stresses NI ‘s recovery of UK sovereignty, Frost points out reasonably that the deal is so called because it is indeed a framework for applying EU law We are told that 1700 pages of EU law …
Photo; The Irish Sea Many unionists are doing what unionists do, poring over a legal text. Not all of them may be clear in their own minds why they’re doing so. Looking for fresh evidence of betrayal or points that need improving? For one, Sam McBride has delivered a glass half empty exposure of Rishi Sunak’s bouncy oversell. The border in the Irish Sea may have been replaced by the green channel but it is alive and well in the …
24 hours on, the chances of success for Rishi Sunak’s mission are no clearer. Optimism however has the edge on the EU stage. As its cheerleader the FT describes it solving the Protocol quandary presages an entire reset of the UK’s future relations with the EU, quoting for instance the veteran diplomat Kim Darroch: It will make a real, positive, difference in Northern Ireland. It will stand up Sumac’s claim to be a problem solver. It will get us back …
The latest ruling from the Supreme Court should surprise no-one. The justices affirmed previous precedent and confirmed what was obvious: the Protocol was lawfully implemented. Since the ruling, there have been calls to ditch the Good Friday Agreement. Anti- Agreement unionists say the consent principle isn’t worth the paper it’s written on because it didn’t stop the Protocol If the Agreement should go because it’s useless, what does that say about the Act of Union? In its ruling, the Supreme …
Nerves on all sides are stretched like skins on a drum waiting to see what emerges from the forthcoming Protocol negotiations. Every cautious word is parsed and construed for signs of progress or the lack of it. Make no mistake a big push is on for a positive outcome on two fronts; to end the deadlock in the relations between the UK and EU and to come up with enough to restore the DUP to the Assembly. Never mind the …
All Northern Ireland parties and groups including victims are united on one thing. They are opposed to the UK government’s NI Troubles, (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill. Nevertheless the Bill began its long passage to become law – or not –in the House of Lords last Wednesday. The Lords debate presents a good opportunity to air the issues in one place in this lengthy post. A vote will eventually be held on whether to recommend scrapping the Bill entirely or heavily …
We are teetering on a cliff edge of absurdity about calling an Assembly election “ nobody wants. ” From the DUP viewpoint Peter Robinson brilliantly describes the contradictions in every party’s position except his own. He might have added that it was Chris Heaton Harris and his cronies in the ERG who more than any other faction got us into this trouble in the first place by championing a Withdrawal Agreement with the Protocol attached under frankly false pretences. The …
As we treasure long memories in this distinguished forum, I offer 1973-4 as the nearest parallel to the meltdown in government we face today. In the UK as a whole the miner’s strike in 1973 produced power cuts and a three day working week. Four months into ’74. Northern Ireland suffered its own exclusive version of power cuts all over again in the UWC strike, a loyalist revolt against the first fragile power sharing Executive that had been set up …
Not only in Dublin at the weekend but for the whole series of conferences on Ireland’s Future, the aims are first, to add momentum to the eventual creation of a United Ireland by convening a Citizens’ Assembly ; and two, to come up with a generous offer of unity unionists can’t refuse – in both senses ; impossible to refuse because so attractive, (the smiley version) and (hint of rough stuff) because the numbers of nationalists North and south would …
Whither the union. I find myself becoming weary as I write this. Articles about the demise of the union, about unionist malaise and mistakes, are so common these days that they all sound the same. I stopped writing them at one point because I had nothing new to add. Even now, people write these pieces with a weird air of arrogance. They want you to know that they and they alone have figured out that unionism is in a difficult …
The greatest public obsequies in history are over. The hangover begins now. The death of the Queen allowed millions to think of the nation as a big family which could unite at such a time. Every nation or a distinct component of it needs an identity to survive. For a large majority, the Queen was at the heart of it. Whether the unity survives both for the nation and- come to think of it- even the royal family- are quite …
I’m using my privilege as a poster here to try to sum up a couple of posts by Frank Schnittger and myself which are about struggling to find meaning in the chaotic and long draw out course of the Troubles. I’d better be careful as this could lead to endless exchanges but I’ll draw the line here. Eventually we all have more urgent topics to cope with like a rudderless government during an economic convulsion. I suppose I was …
Welcome to the real world, far away from Irish identity neuroses and the Tory leadership race. The world of spreading strikes, galloping inflation and energy prices. The situation is changing so fast even the tabloids haven’t caught up with it yet. On the Today programme this morning covered by The Times, energy industry bosses are calling for the endless political battle to close early and emergency action to be taken before the next energy price cap kicks in – on …
Electricity bills set to soar to £500 a month in October, in my own area West London the electricity grid has hit capacity and a ban on building new homes is in prospect to 2035, rail strikes with no end in sight, with nurses and teachers to follow and the possibility of a general strike to come… Health and social care services in England face “the greatest workforce crisis in their history” and the government has no credible strategy to make the situation …
Although by instinct I prefer to hunt for the substance behind political attitudes however perverse they seem, I’m reduced to calling the latest on the Protocol – bonkers, plain and not so simple. The Tory leadership fight has tipped it into the surreal. First in a dash to complete his legacy, Johnson rushed to complete the Protocol Bill’s early Commons stages on the last full day on Thursday. Then it’s over to Lords in September and a new government. …
Photo courtesy ITV News Mick may be aiming at higher things but I’m stuck down low and dirty in the Tory leadership contest. I can’t take my eyes off it. Unusually the written press are ahead of TV thanks to social media with lots of talk about black propaganda, stalking horses and dirty dealing behind the scenes. So the first leadership debate on Channel 4 last night came as a welcome relief. Despite overheated claims in the press that the …
The phrases “culture wars” and “identity politics ” are comparatively recent imports from America but people are using them as if they’ve been around forever. On the whole they are pejoratives, used by rightwing politicians to denigrate or “gaslight “ the slow march to freedom of women however described, and ethnic and social minorities, by creating “wedge issues” to stir up alarm and so divide and rule. Ireland as a whole was ahead of the game long ago. The rise …
The mouse didn’t roar as the House of Commons sent the Protocol Bill on its way yesterday. “Only if enacted” said an uncharacteristically strident Jeffrey Donaldson, would the DUP go back to Stormont, advancing the curious argument that the Protocol Bill would “give back to the elected representatives in Northern Ireland the power to take the decisions that they have not been able to take.”(It would give them to Westminster not Stormont). Most MPs including the Conservatives who spoke, were …
