David Cameron
“during the Derry visit, Martin McGuinness and Peter Robinson were nowhere to be seen, surely mindful of their upcoming trade mission to China.”
Tweet According to an Irish News report today …OFMDFM has refuted any suggestion that the Stormont leaders snubbed the Dalai Lama when he visited Derry last month. A spokesperson for OFMDFM said the ministers were unable to attend “due to prior diary commitments”. Which is fine… After all, “diary pressures” was the same excuse Tony Blair [...] more »
2013 elections: the alienation of Freelander man
Tweet The local election results in England and Wales (mainly rural England in actual fact) are now in. They are somewhere between a protest vote with little relevance to the next Westminster elections and a complete sea change in British politics. As ever the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. It does, however, illustrate [...] more »
The Welfare Mission
Tweet When George Osborne became Shadow Chancellor he made Welfare Reform one of his primary issues to focus on when in Government. Along with Iain Duncan-Smith, they worked on what would become Universal Credit which has had a difficult birth as a Government policy. The past week, more so than ever, with Osborne pointing towards [...] more »
London using financial levers to remind Executive of its responsibility to address sectarian divides
Tweet East Belfast MP Naomi Long asked a long question [Q7] during Prime Minster’s Questions on Wednesday 13 March. She wanted to know what role he saw for the British and Irish governments “as joint custodians of the agreement” in progressing the outstanding issues of “reconciliation, unequivocal support for the rule of law, and to [...] more »
Budget 2013: A missed opportunity
Tweet George Osborne for the first time appeared nervous. No Chancellor in recent memory, apart from perhaps Gordon Brown, in the early years of New Labour appeared so cocksure. For three years Osborne has had to dress up bad news as good news. He cherry picked the statistics that suited him best, of course all [...] more »
Unionists be warned. Negative campaigning against Scottish independence is not enough
Tweet A warning shot against unionist complacency in Scotland… Backing for independence among voters aged 18 to 24 stood at 58 per cent, according to the latest Ipsos MORI survey on voting intentions for the 2014 referendum…There were 34 per cent who supported Scotland leaving the UK, the poll of more than 1,000 people interviewed [...] more »
Opening shots muffled in UK government’s fightback against Scottish independence campaign
Tweet Significantly as PM and not as Conservative leader David Cameron launched on Sunday a “heart and head” campaign against Scottish “separation” as unionists like to call it, with a upbeat image of four happy partners. Britain is admired around the world as a source of prosperity, power and security. Those glorious Olympics last summer [...] more »
Cameron’s Dunkirk?
Tweet So at last David Cameron delivered his long awaited speech on Europe. Arguably the most important speech, by a British Prime Minister, since Tony Blair’s speech proposing the case for war in Iraq. British politics, it seems, has entered the era of the referendum arguably started with the referendum on the voting system in [...] more »
How willing will Labour be to shoot the UKIP fox that’s eating David Cameron’s chickens?
Tweet David Cameron’s just given in his long awaited speech on Europe. Not much in the way of surprises. He wants a referendum to sort out the democratic deficit at home (code for getting the UKIP monkey off his back on the way into the next general election), and to open negotiation with a Europe [...] more »
A troubling relationship
Tweet The ever fractious relationship between the UK and European Union seems to be at breaking point, or so it seems if you listened to the Eurosceptic’s of the Conservative Party. The Conservative Party has come a long way from the days of Sir Winston Churchill, who is held up in Europe as one of [...] more »
Finucane allegations – put up or shut up
Tweet Ruth Dudley Edwards, quoted approvingly in the News Letter, has exposed the posthumous indictment of Pat Finucane in the Daily Telegraph that deeply offends the family and repels more than supporters of a public inquiry. It’s important to say that the Prime Minister accepted the findings of the de Silva report following Stevens, [...] more »
#Finucane: this report is a sham, this report is a whitewash
Tweet So now we’ve had the publication of the latest report into the killing of Pat Finuance in 1989 courtsey of Rt Hon Desmond de Silva QC (full text here). The surprise that David Cameron articulated in the Commons today, much like with Saville, is merely the formal admission of what has long been accepted by most other [...] more »
Finucane: facts we need to know updated
Tweet In the light of David Cameron’s statement, to keep my head above water in the flood of information and angry comment I itemise questions of fact I‘d like to keep sight of. Perhaps others can add to them. Update I intend to add to the list myself as I plough through the review [...] more »
David Cameron and the Sash his father never wore…
Tweet On a visit to the United Arab Emirates, lovely sash David!! And so, your captions place??? H/t to the eagle-eyed Stefan Stern … more »
Is Labour’s route to regaining national trust through ‘foreign policy’?
Tweet One way of looking at the 2010 UK general election is that it was one that Labour needed to lose, but as many Tories look back on the 1992 election on the one they might similarly have better lost. Ah but, history never quite repeats itself in the same way twice… Janan Ganesh in [...] more »
Cameron: “it’s local politicians who have to deliver on that”.
Tweet Prime Minister David Cameron was in Northern Ireland today, as part of a UK-wide tour to promote the Olympics. But despite their recent complaints, neither the NI First and deputy First Ministers appear to have been able to schedule a meeting. According to Martina Purdy, The first and deputy first ministers were not on hand to meet [...] more »
Can Cameron get beyond “jejune policy and serial incoherence”?
Tweet I offer this as an addendum to Turgon’s piece… First, Matthew Parris in the Times on Saturday… To Mr Cameron’s critics first. Spare us, please, every sentence with the words, “bedrock”, “core”, and “traditional supporters”, abiding values or “traditional conservatism” in it. What do these words mean – what in terms of doable legislation [...] more »
The Coalition’s woes: mid term blues or the times they are a changing?
Tweet The backlash to the Labour gains in the council elections seems to be continuing. Some such as William Hague have tired to write the election results off as a typical mid term result (and to be fair although good for Labour they were not a Tory melt down) but others are more concerned. The [...] more »
The omni shambles and Labour’s difficulty capatilising
Tweet The omni shambles which is the current government seems to continue. I mentioned the disaster which was the budget and the spin surrounding it recently. Jeremy Hunt and his special advisor have yet again shone a spotlight on the relationship between Rupert Murdock’s media empire and politicians (though of course the Tories were far [...] more »
Coalition trials and tribulations over budget
Tweet The coalition have been having a few weeks of pretty bad media storms. There was the fuel crisis that never was when the government in trying to make people prepare for a possible crisis managed to create one. The government may have thought they were preparing themselves like a mini version of the Thatcher [...] more »
-
Books
-
Death of Dolours Price – opens up possibility that her taped oral history will be published (or not)
Tweet Dolours Price – sister, mother, bomber, prisoner and a thorn in Gerry Adams’ side – died in her Malahide home on Wednesday night. The Guardian’s Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald writes: Price was involved in a car bombing at the Old Bailey in 1973, which injured more than 200 people and may have led to [...] read our review » -
“Unionism Decayed 1997-2007″ by David Vance: book review
Tweet I initially wrote this when the book was first published three years ago; whilst certain elements of it now sound dated, its basic premise that the period of 1997-2007 was a period of irreversible decay for Northern Irish Unionism can still be argued as a valid opinion. My own feeling is that it did [...] read our review » -
The First Shades of God (Jamie Bryson): unremarkable theology, but an insight into the mind of the protest-organiser
Tweet Jamie Bryson has come to prominence recently as one of the leaders of the flag protests across Northern Ireland. As Chris Donnelly pointed out in his post (and was echoed later in the Belfast Telegraph), Jamie Bryson is a well known loyalist in North Down where he unsuccessfully stood at the council elections under [...] read our review »
-