How Republican intransigence drove boost in Unionist turnout (and flattened its own)

So shortly I will be wrapping the proverbial wet towel on my head for my customary post election analysis for most of the major parties in NI and GB. To keep you going in the meantime, here’s the start of my OpEd analysis for the Irish Independent on how SF’s intransigence over parades in North Belfast drove the unionist vote upwards: I’ve lost count of the number of Northern Ireland media commentators who regularly and spontaneously burst into laughter at …

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Unionism’s graduated response proving an interesting challenge, and a far from stupid one…

Somehow there’s an odd resonance between the now infamous ‘Graduated Response’ of Unionists and that classicly ambiguous acronym of Sinn Fein’s TUAS document. The latest iteration is not a call for the collapse of Stormont, but in fact a greater focus on the particulars of the Parades Commission’s decision in North Belfast… The issue of the Ligoniel parade will not go away after 12th July evening. This is a further part of our graduated response strategy and follows on from …

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