Gareth Brown

In the absence of real deterrents, you’ll catch more students with honey than with vinegar

Gareth Brown on September 17, 2020, 12:34 pm

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It would be difficult to look at the scenes from the Holylands of Belfast in the last number of days and not be very concerned. Scores of students partying until the early hours of the morning caused understandable frustration and fury among residents and a media furore. Either the young people in question do not fully understand the risk to themselves and others around them, or, the public awareness campaign is not persuading them sufficiently, or, they both understand and …

Wanting to win the argument in a viable long term is not talking down Nationalism

Gareth Brown on July 28, 2020, 1:45 pm

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As David has noted on Slugger, the establishment of the shared island unit in the office of An Taoiseach has intensified the discussion about our constitutional future on the island of Ireland. There is little detail in what the work of this unit will look like and how it will approach the monumental task of restarting a conversation that caused a civil war and decades of violence North and South, but we shouldn’t be surprised. That’s how coalition governments work …

The new normal is an opportunity for Northern Ireland’s centre ground

Gareth Brown on June 9, 2020, 2:07 pm

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The centre ground in Northern Ireland has been a tough road for the last fifteen years. Rightly or wrongly, the truth is that our own version of it has been a somewhat half-hearted attempt to be brave enough to say that elections, as opposed to a border poll if and when there is one, need not necessarily be about securing the most nationalist or unionist votes. Recently, Irish economist David McWilliams when describing how Churchill had won the war but …

Our own populism holds us back in Northern Ireland

Gareth Brown on June 1, 2020, 5:14 pm

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For a part of the world that relies so heavily on compromise to literally allow public administration to function, we don’t do nuance very well. You need only look at the public outcry to the mere suggestion that we may have to pay for our own water back when the New Decade, New Approach deal was agreed as the latest evidence of our own self-defeating populism. The uncomfortable, and unpopular, truth is that this mindset holds us back in Northern …

Taking control of our finances is the natural next step for Northern Ireland…

Gareth Brown on May 25, 2020, 3:32 pm

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Devolution is a process, not an event. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t actually Donald Dewar, the first First Minister of Scotland, who said that. It was the lesser-known former Welsh Secretary, Ron Davies. It was just another soundbite, but it does contain an important political point about the purpose and character of devolution. At the time, there were two dominant and opposing trains of thought. One was that devolution would satisfy the appetite of the majority of the voting …