The gap between politics and the law is further exposed. But ruling on the clash between the Scots and Irish nationalists with the UK government will be the more momentous decision for the Supreme Court.

Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; Current Affairs Commissioning editor BBC Radio 4; Editor Political and Parliamentary Programmes, BBC Westminster; former London Editor Belfast Telegraph. Hon Senior Research Fellow, The Constitution Unit, Univ Coll. London

A unified island will require a strategic and open handed approach, not the offer of cheap British-lite trinkets…

Sinn Fein’s policy document has had what many must have thought was an unusually fair wind from our resident bloggers. Not that I’m trying to undercut any of those critiques, but for realism’s sake it’s worth noting this important caveat from Alex Kane: What they don’t acknowledge is that Irish unity kills off unionism as both a political and electoral force, because their country (Northern Ireland) and the constitutional identity and basis of their citizenship (the Union) would disappear. And …

Read more…

“It was crazy to allege that the Irish government isn’t working for the interests of [northern] businesses.”

This is worth noting. It relates to Arlene’s accusation aimed at the Republic accusing them of poaching FDI opportunities away from NI. In reply to a written question from Cavan Monaghan TD Brendan Smyth, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Mary Mitchell O’Connor noted (scroll down to Question 506) this last week: Both agencies under the aegis of my Department, Enterprise Ireland (EI) and IDA Ireland, engage with relevant bodies in Northern Ireland to pursue areas of mutual advantage. Developing all-island initiatives …

Read more…

Micheál Martin throws a few questions at the all island dialogue on #Brexit to consider…

The Royal Hospital in Kilmainham was the venue for a series of Reconciliation Networking Forums which take place annually [amended from my mistake earlier]. The venue is now being pressed back into the purposes of north-south engagement. Unlike those previous events, this all island civic forum on Brexit (Live Feed available here) has been much more overtly political, making almost inevitable there would be no formal representation from any unionist party. It began this morning with a series of pitches from each of the political leaders and …

Read more…

Unionists have to be nudged to talk, with the incentives of common citizenship and other common interests

Enda Kenny is surely right to be cautious about setting up an “all-Ireland forum” Better to have a “conversation” at least to start with in November.  Even so its ability to speak for all Ireland would be seriously weakened  by the absence of  unionists,  just as it would be counter- productive  for the unionists not to take part eventually .  As things stand, Northern Ireland’s regional government is therefore neither formally or informally to be represented. A fully fledged forum …

Read more…

2016 and the decade of centenaries: What’s that all about then?

WHOM DOES 2016 SERVE: Irish identity and Irish freedom are not contiguous concepts (or realities) by any means. Therein lies a useful and potentially powerful unifying paradox if anyone cares to pick it up and run with it from where it was so recklessly abandoned in early 2011.

Perhaps it is no surprise that people are not fixated on constitutional issues…

You can almost hear the conversation between the Government Spin Doctors on Wednesday afternoon… “It’s only a pointless TV poll about the North… Who cares? No one in the South knows who Stephen Nolan is. Let’s send out Jimmy Deenihan… sure, what harm can he do…” To be fair to MoS Jimmy Deenihan his “No, really” reply to the question if the Republic could afford Northern Ireland if there was unity tomorrow has not done any real or lasting harm. …

Read more…

#IrelandsCall: So similar and yet north and south continue their long slow drift apart…

RTE/BBCNI Ireland’s Call survey 2015 from Slugger Consults Here’s an initial collation of the slides from last night’s programme, taken from what RTE and BBC NI have shared on their websites, and a couple of screenshots I took at the time. If you have any more do let me know and I will add them to a second iteration? There’s lots of yummy data in the overall survey, not least the indications just how happy everyone seems to be both …

Read more…

#SluggerReport – Can Loyalism come in from the cold, and what’s a Republican worth the name?

Had to decamp to the back garden for this one, and had a few disruptions, so it takes a wee while to get going… Also this clip from last night’s The View in which Peter Sheridan and Sophie Long discuss how Loyalist paramilitarism can be made to go away… Is there a subtle admission there that heretofore the authorities have been turning a blind eye to Loyalist criminality (no comments on that point unless you watch the whole thing please?)… …

Read more…

So, what place a possible Brexit in Northern Ireland’s elections?

There was a time when Europe had a popular political champion in Northern Ireland. John Hume made a successful pitch for one of Northern Ireland’s three European seats in the first directly elected European Parliament, based as much on his personal commitment to developing NI PLC as to any sectarian pitch to nationalist voters. Since then and the onset of our local political institutions, the economic role of the EU in the wellbeing of Northern Ireland has got little play from …

Read more…

“Sinn Féin’s purported defence of social welfare recipients will play well to their galleries”

Noel Whelan in his Irish Times column notes a cooling in Washington towards the leader of the Sinn Fein this week: …there was a sense that Gerry Adams was feted and focused on less during this year’s St Patrick’s festivities and exchanges than in previous years. The situation with his on/off/on again meeting with the US state department reflects not so much a wariness about engaging with him in light of recent events but rather a weariness with Northern Ireland politics in …

Read more…

Where Gerry Adams Walks, Unionism Fears To Tread

I’ve written before what my views as a “small u” unionist (or as I prefer, a “big picture unionist) are on Sinn Fein, and to be honest, the approach I take as a voter is the same for SF as it is for all the parties, there is 1 party I find much more comfort in voting for, because they are more often than not aligned with my stance on issues, but beyond that…it’s purely a “who will serve us …

Read more…

It’s the economy, stupid. Not a federal Ireland

In the Irish Times Paul Gillespie floats the idea that the North might benefit by a federal deal with the south. He invokes the useful hand played by the Republic in the recent Stormont House agreement. Certainly Charlie Flanagan waxed more eloquently than Theresa Villiers but that isn’t saying much. I discern a much bigger hand played by HM Treasury in setting the financial deal  and in monitoring  future Executive  performance.  This is surely appropriate as they put up such …

Read more…

NI’s exchequer transfers make us a more prosperous society than the south…

Interesting report from Maynooth finds that Northern Ireland is more prosperous than Ireland, indeed DUP run Castlereagh leads the affluence league for the whole island followed by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, North Down, Antrim and Lisburn…. Carl O’Brien in the Irish Times reports: Unemployment levels across many parts of Northern Ireland, for example, are half the rates south of the Border. The North also has a much more even spread of affluence right across the six counties, whereas well-off areas in the Republic …

Read more…

Is This What A United Ireland Would Be?

[Originally posted on my own site, but I thought given the…interest shown yesterday in my status as pro union, that the sluggerverse might get a kick out of this…]   I regularly wonder what “a united ireland” would be. Many people call for it, but would the reality be what they expected? Very few people indeed are alive today that remember a united ireland… and the world of 2014 is far removed from the world of 1916…So what would happen? …

Read more…

I prefer good art and archaeology to bad politics

Taken from Andy Pollak’s monthly blog… Sometimes the sheer badness of politics in Northern Ireland takes my breath away (badness=bad faith, lying, incompetence, being mired in the past). Take the third week of October, for example. Peter Robinson boycotted the opening meeting of the British government initiated all-party talks he had himself called for to deal with the deadlock between the DUP and Sinn Fein on a wide range of issues which has led to the North being largely ungoverned …

Read more…

North -South is a political gift going a-begging

Two cheers to the Financial Times (£) for giving space to one of the many topics that people in Northern Ireland who live close to it take for granted but shouldn’t. The story is headlined “Irish two-speed economy puts integration under pressure”. Sixteen years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement that ushered in a fragile but enduring peace in Northern Ireland – and helped boost the “Celtic Tiger” economy that was then taking off in the Republic – the …

Read more…