NORTH ANTRIM: The DUP’s strong showing in last year’s Westminster election showed something of a return to dominance. With Allister taking the second non DUP, a fourth is not likely. Ministerial profile for Storey and Frew’s high profile on the Agriculture committee should bring them home top.
If Fianna Fail have the deal I think they have, then they are quids in for supporting Enda Kenny at the head of a minority Fine Gael led government. Putting the contentious matter out to a commission of experts brought some levity from pol corrs who remember the FF leader’s reputation for long fingering tough decisions when he was Minister of Health. But this commission serves Mr Martin’s stated political interests (and a majority of current Dail parties) in a …
The indignity endured by the families of those killed at Hillsborough was not the core of the unimaginable tragedy itself, but how a quasi-official narrative of self-infliction became mainstream… The police claimed that the gate at the Leppings Lane had been forced open by fans; there were suggestions that typical hooliganism was to blame; the Prime Minister’s press advisor said events were caused by a ‘tanked-up mob’; and the Sun newspaper, to its enduring shame, under the headline THE TRUTH, …
On the #SluggerReport this morning I ask three questions about unionist fears over Martin McGuinness becoming First Minister: Firstly, who is it that’s fearful? It’s not primarily those on the extreme edge of Unionism/Loyalism to whom the DUP are making this regular pitch since, these days at least, they are likely to be unmoved by such a pitch (given the DUP already work with Sinn Fein on day by day basis). Secondly, what is it that they are fearful of? …
pic.twitter.com/aIy1jBB9vr — irishpollingreport (@dotski_w) April 26, 2016 From the official Facebook page for the MP for West Belfast… in their brave attempt to do the near impossible and hold onto five out of the six seats… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
Episode Three of On The Doors reviewing the week that was of the 2016 Assembly election campaign. In this weeks edition we talked about the Alliance and Green party manifestos and the Abortion rights debate that has been ongoing during this election. This week we were joined by Commentator Felicity Huston David McCannDavid McCann holds a PhD in North-South relations from University of Ulster. You can follow him on twitter @dmcbfs
This morning I got off the metro at Maalbeek station, it’s not the closest one to my office in Brussels, but today was the first day it was open since last month’s attacks and I felt as I owed to it the city to say I wasn’t afraid. Its cleaned platform and white panels seemed the same as before, nothing had changed, save an Asian film-crew fixing their camera next to the escalator and a small, make-shift shrine of flowers …
On this morning’s SluggerReport I took a glance at Sinn Fein’s Ard Fheis in the context of the Assembly elections. There wasn’t much to say. Dolores Kelly’s attack on them last week may have been easily rebuffed, but the impression was of a victory celebration that never came off. It’s not just me either. The circumspect Gerry Moriarty noticed it too: It was a weekend to commemorate the past, celebrate the Dáil successes, prime people for the Assembly elections, plan …
Slugger had some the thickest coverage the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis, courtesy of Alan and live tweeting from David. But for a rich under the skin analysis of where Sinn Fein finds itself after more than fifty days of the 32nd Dail’s inability to decide a government you have to go far to find better Eoin O’Malley’s: In an election following years of austerity, with the water charges issue and even 1916, it seemed set up for a Sinn Fein breakthrough. But …
In a speech dominated by the shadow of 1916, Gerry Adams gave a piece of his mind to Enda and Micheál and promised to end the ban on marriage equality in the North.
One of the benefits of being a US President in your final year in office, as well as getting to decide who can and can’t come to your party, is the freedom to say what you really think – even if President Obama continues to appear to be mis-briefed on shared, as opposed to integrated, education here… ANYhoo… As the BBC report notes, US President Barack Obama was speaking in London to an audience of young people when he responded to …
METRIC SPEED LIMITS – As of this morning it’s now Sinn Féin policy to introduce the metric system for all road signage and to create an all-Ireland body to standardise speed limits and road traffic signs.
The best journalists are often oddballs. They can win close access to power, regardless of whether power is of the state or anti -state variety. They lack – and often spurn – status. They tend to walk alone and barely recognise dress codes. Perhaps their greatest quality is persistence against the odds, in which courage and ego play equal parts. If they have to, they skirt round or quietly ignore the rules of the institutions they work for and …
The centenary of 1916 loomed large in the Friday night speeches to the Sinn Féin delegates assembled in the Convention Centre Dublin. Party chairperson Declan Kearney and deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness both spoke about reconciliation, outreach and dialogue.
Foyle is really ‘greater Derry’. West bank wise, it grabs everything not in the Republic. On the east, it balloons through rural areas out to the airport, running down through Lettershandoney then hitting the river at Magheramason. SF’s public optimism rests on the Assembly vote in 2011 when, proportionately, Sinn Fein only trailed the SDLP by a few hundred 1st preferences.
Good to see Newton Emerson back in his post at the Irish Times again. This week he’s turned his fire on Micheal Martin for the cardinal post-Blairite sin of post-modern triangulation (which I don’t quite believe), but here he makes a very strong point: Martin’s statesmanlike stance above party interests kept him aloof from any dispute about welfare itself, which was most fortuitous.Yet as the crisis limped on from one all-encompassing set of talks to another, the timeless warning that London …
ZERO WASTE manifesto launched by Green Party to “bring about an end to the waste of money, time and opportunities at Stormont”.
COMPLEXITY RULES: East Londonderry starts at Eglinton just outside Derry city, running up to the boundary with North Antrim on the coast. The hinterlands of Coleraine, Limavady, Dungiven and Garvagh all represent separate and distinct political territories.
The burden of incumbency and being at the fullest logistical stretch clearly leads to some awkward solutions. It seems that Sinn Fein is not the only party with what Tony Benn used to call ‘ishoos’ west of the Bann. Belfast’s hardest working pol hack Sam McBride reports… Last month the DUP announced that it was standing two candidates in the constituency – despite the fact that in last year’s general election its vote was less than the quota required for …
Very useful overview of where the SDLP finds itself just now from Suzanne Breen. I’d quibble over the list of places where the SDLP might be endangered, but I think she’s nailed something important here: Those critics who accuse the SDLP of betraying its traditional roots are wrong, because, from the very beginning, the party was a broad church. When founder member Austin Currie moved into southern politics in 1989 it was to join the highly conservative and pro-establishment Fine …
