In the last mandate David Ford liked to boast that the Alliance party was unique because they had been finally chosen to occupy the Justice department by the whole Assembly rather than selected by the mechanism of D’Hondt. Because of their status they are more essential to the formation of the Executive than the SDLP despite their fewer numbers. So what’s changed? A bit of bargaining is ok at a time of maximum leverage but the brinkmanship should end soon. …
So much comment about tactics and process! If they are to capitalise on a public mood for change, the SDLP like all the parties will have to concentrate on what they stand for beyond the old definitions. Reforming the education system to promote social integration and a diverse identity would be one big bold and creative approach to “making Northern Ireland work” And it’s actually in their manifesto. The SDLP appear to acknowledge that preserving the elements of the traditional …
Since the election and even before it, commentators have been casting around desperately for anything that suggests that the old muscle- bound duopoly is starting to crumble. Even the DUP “victory” is being hyped as a harbinger of change alongside the Sinn Fein “ defeat”. Something, anything that might mean fresh movement or greater stability. So the zeitgeist has moved in the direction of a more “normal “ democracy that an opposition signifies, and yet an opposition that doesn’t threaten …
In the DUP manifesto,, buzz phrases like better service delivery and the modernisation of government are invoked in support of the business- like appeal of Arlene Foster the party is relying on at the outset of their campaign. There is a marked lack of “shared future” and united community rhetoric. At the same time unionist/loyalist tunes while clearly present are relatively muted. Whatever the claims and counterclaims of the short campaign there’s little doubt that the DUP and Sinn Fein …
I though it worthwhile to put on the record Gerry Adams’ Easter Centenary address, part unreconstructed old republicanism, part election address, a classic of its kind in style and content, without further comment. On Sunday 27th March, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams TD addressed the Easter Rising commemoration in Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery. Mr Adams stated that hurts and divisions must be healed if we are to realise the vision of the 1916 Proclamation. HIs speech in full: Address by …
TIME FOR CHANGE: I was on Evening Extra yesterday (40 mins in) with the former Communications Director, Ruairi O’Kane debating the virtues of co-option. Before this term is out, we will have two more new faces in Stormont as Peter Robinson and Pat Ramsey depart the Assembly this month.
Guest Blogger Ann Allan talks about the Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month event at Stormont on Monday November 2nd As a blogger I’m always on the look out for a subject for my next blog. In my case it is usually something witty (hopefully) and the word ‘me’ or ‘I’ comes up quite a lot. As I lay in bed last night unable to sleep I was thinking about what I was going to write about for my next blog. It …
Fergal McFerran is the President of NUS-USI, the organisation which represents around 200,000 students in Higher and Further education across Northern Ireland. He tweets @FergalMcFerran. This weekend I did something I was never sure that I’d be able to do. I got on a train and I went home to see my family. This journey home was different to all of the others I’d ever made though. It was different because this time I went home with the sole purpose …
Very gradually, the language surrounding the political talks is changing from negative to cautiously constructive, as Noel McAdam’s report shows .. In the strongest indication the party could return to the Executive, Mrs Foster has said the DUP will respond “positively” to positive developments during the inter-party talks on IRA activity and welfare reform. There may be sticking points over dealing with the past but these are not political deal breakers. Newton Emerson in the Irish News and at length …
Yelps of alarm are appearing in the papers as the political talks are poised to enter a third week without signs of resolution. Depression seems to be the order the day. Theresa Villiers reports a big gap remaining between the parties . Jim Downey in the Indo depicts a chronic low intensity crisis which the Republic has ignored and over which it has little leverage More or less quiet”? If you look closely, you can see that the place isn’t …
Amid all the sterile political sparring, the most significant development in the Assembly stand- off has been the one that has been almost totally ignored – the UK governments’ publication of a summary of measures which would form the basis of a Northern Ireland (Stormont House Agreement ) Bill to be included in the Queens Speech at the beginning of the Westminster session. With the addition of the paramilitary monitoring review , the summary confirms the obvious fact that the …
For general stimulation, Kevin Toolis, a noted historian of the IRA, presents the millennarian version of Sinn Fein’s outlook in the Times(£) For the IRA and Sinn Fein, the collapse of Ulster’s power-sharing executive shortly before Irish voters go to the polls is a perfect political storm that could sweep Gerry Adams to power in Dublin.. And of course, untainted by ever having held national office, Sinn Fein, Ireland’s only cross-border party, presents itself as the leftish unblemished defenders of …
Gaming in the Assembly crisis reaches new heights ( or depths) with the DUP delivering an undisclosed ultimatum to the secretary of state and the Ulster Unionists implementing their own ultimatum by refusing to take part in talks on the basis of the Stormont House Agreement, even though Mike Nesbitt’s way out of one part of the impasse is through the same Stormont House Agreement. Meanwhile Sinn Fein postures above the fray as yet another old warrior enters the frame. …
David McKittrick emerges from retirement to pass a magisterial verdict on the Assembly in the Newsletter, while the paper has just run a long and fascinating interview with David Trimble by Alex Kane. His view of the history since 1998 is not a million miles from the familiar saying that Sinn Fein were clever enough to play their weaknesses to advantage while unionists were too stupid and bigoted to realise that they’d won. Presumably recorded before the latest developments in …
So the pressure is mounting on Sinn Fein North and South to do – what exactly? Agree to accept or at least put up with a revival of the International Monitoring Commission and dissociate themselves from the IRA? This would require a new political calculus all round. Still, the Irish government may have made a move in that direction. Will the British follow? The Sunday Times (£) reports a revival of pressure in the Shinners over the IRA’s ill gotten …
Is Jeffrey Donaldson MP offering a way out of “ crisis?” He said it would be a different situation if Sinn Féin “came clean” and said murder had been carried out by members of the Provisional IRA and said they would work to rectify the situation. He said the Sinn Féin leadership needed to “recognise they have a problem” and then work could begin to solve the crisis. The IMC issued its final report in February 2011 and Mr Donaldson …
Signs of life in the SDLP are an interesting sidebar in the great IRA structures kerfuffle. Alasdair McDonnell has taken up the challenge to contradict the Guardian’s Henry McDonald’s charge below in yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph, which is basically that the SDLP has played mini-me to Sinn Fein for far too long. The SDLP may have stopped passively supporting the Sinn Fein line through those tortuous post-Good Friday Agreement negotiations, and the party is no longer perhaps the Shinners’ advert-adjuncts, but its …
Oh God, not another fundamental breakpoint founded on the highest principles, whether they’re about welfare or the IRA! Come on, get real. This kerfuffle over “IRA structures” will pass. For all their simulated outrage over the IRA or welfare, no politician – none of the leaders anyway – want to close Stormont down. Electoral politics are also in play on both sides of the border. We should discount it. No clear advantage can be gained by any party threatening to …
On the surface at least, few outside the place are noticing. The public seem to be ignoring it, as if in a dream. Civil society stays generally schtum, like jobsworths in the old Soviet society. The parties are crying for attention. Gerry Adams has been polishing up his narrative of entitlement “By slashing hundreds of millions of pounds from the finances of the North’s Executive, the British government has attacked the ability of the political institutions to deliver for citizens.” …
The silence from local economists and business people has been deplorably deafening about the game of chicken being played out in the Assembly over the budget and the welfare Bill. Rather than mixing it with the politicians they can perhaps be forgiven for turning to bigger pictures and hoping that the Assembly will do likewise. But time is running out for this passive attitude and a bolder line should be taken soon by those who keep the economic show on the …
