Brian Walker 
Mike Nesbitt’s sudden resignation goes to the heart of what’s wrong with how Northern Ireland is governed. Modest hopes for limited success have been dashed. If systems and attitudes don’t change, the crisis in the health service and others like it will never significantly improve. Independent report after expert report has spelt out loud and clear that if every hospital retains its present range of specialisms, resources cannot be concentrated effectively to deliver timely major treatment for patients throughout the …
A bit late but still time to catch up with Gloria: my life on TV on iPlayer, the ultimate accolade of a Gloria Hunniford Night on BBC FOUR last Saturday. It features a set of shows including an interview with film star Audrey Hepburn, a chat show standing in for her network mentor Terry Wogan and an appearance singing on the Val Doonican show. The decades around the turn of the millennium reached the high point of MOR (middle of …
Newton Emersons’s verdict in the Irish Times can hardy be bettered as a rare and heartening cross community success … Pleasant streets can only partly explain the numbers in the city centre. What unionist visitors are discovering is that the Fleadh is not repellingly “political”, as that term is applied in Northern Ireland. Culture is always political, of course, but the songs are not sectarian, the atmosphere is not partisan and the national symbolism is discrete. I noticed only one …
From hot house London (figuratively as well as literally)., I’m dismayed but no longer surprised that the trend of unionist opinion over the still unfolding Donaldson scandal may be diverting from the cul de sac of the DUP to the black hole of TUV. I’m picking this up from Andy Pollak’s post where he speculates on the likely impact of the extent of the scandal on the DUP’s fortunes at the next Assembly election. What the DUP establishment knew and …
Just one for Andy to fix?
Former 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
Predictably enough, the Westminster right wing and the DUP did have to turn it into a row about the border. It was quickly revealed that the Somali (whoops correction) the Sudanese suspect entered NI illegally from the south and was granted leave to remain three years ago. Cue firestorm over immigration policy and in particular -wouldn’t you know it? – the open border and how to police it . From The Times The UK has returned only one asylum seeker …
In his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy JD Vance wrote that “to understand me, you must understand that I am a Scots-Irish hillbilly at heart” So writing from the heart on X Vance waded into the lists in the politicians’ row over the murder of Henry Novak “He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom …
Fresh from taking a bit of a battering in the May 22 by elections in the Republic , Sinn Fein have received a setback for their ambition to build a left wing coalition in the Republic to challenge the Fine Gael – Fianna Fail partnership. The ambition had looked like a goer after the success of the tentative left wing alliance to secure the election as President of the left leaning independent Catherine Connolly. But now,after the qualified victory in …
Pat Finucane We have three categories of legacy case in the News apparently unable to advance, just as there hundreds of other cases not even contemplated for attention : the 26 outstanding in Kenova not linked to Stakeknife ; the Disappeared said to be outside the formal Disappeared process ; and the Springhill inquests. Although subject to different legal treatment, they have in common the welter of detail even in the absence of conclusive evidence, the demand for answers and the …
Despite his cringe-making fawning, Trump got very little change out his comic opera performance with Xi Jinping. His abject posture gave the game away. In the hardball game between the superpowers Xi has the advantage. Trump the hustler tries a selling line to make a deal. He parades the tech bros. Xi is unmoved. Trump the needy one pleads with Xi to help end the Iran war he himself started. How daft can he get? Why would Xi bother himself …
Sir Declan Morgan, Chief Commissioner ICRIR The combined impact of the May report on the functioning of the ICRIR and Nuala O’Loan’s scathing criticism that it was ‘”set up to fail” is bound to dismay its unbiased supporters. The HR issues are bad enough, perhaps emerging from the problems of recruiting a mix of skills for a number of different roles. But criticisms from an expert on policing and justice such as Baroness O’Loan is even more damaging. Her charge …
Matthew O’Toole, the former Downing St insider now leader of the opposition at Stormont, has issued a firm but polite warning of the prospects for all Ireland’s future of the increasingly likely alternative to Labour. YouGov’s poll today extends Reform’s lead, Reform 28% Con 17% Green 16% Lab 16% LD 13% Starmer may be replaced as leader by despairing Labour MPs, but if he is not, the next most likely prime minister is certain to have a radically different approach …
UCL’s Constitution Unit has done something remarkable. They’ve produced a report on the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive, Towards a Programme of Reform that’s understated. Perhaps they think that NI politics is no longer quite the glaring anomaly compared to the upheavals across the water? But no. The litany of failure is fully recognised. The perverse creation of power sharing as a brake on progress not an accelerator. The Assembly sitting out for five out of nine years, the evasion …
The UK Supreme Court’s ruling that the rights of victims and their families have not been diminished by the amended operation of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) all but guarantees the final passage of the UK government’s replacement Troubles Bill. But it does little to satisfy its critics. The Supreme Court rejected the NI Courts’ finding that the Windsor Framework was the proximate cause of diminution, leaving open the possibility of a referral to the European Court …
King Charles’ presence in the White House at a sensitive moment is just the moment to recall a very different visit to the iconic building only a few years after its construction – the burning of the White House by Major General Robert Ross in the war of 1812. Trust Ulster thranness to erect a splendid obelisk monument to the distinguished local boy at his eponymous home village, Rostrevor co Down, to be seen wide and far on both sides …
Cormac Moore, the rather scratchy successor to the much missed and greatly lamented Eamon Phoenix as the historian of the Irish News, has a piece in the paper about BBC Northern Ireland’s bias down the century of its existence. He means institutional bias against nationalism. I can only lamely qualify that by saying not all of it was conscious and it wasn’t challenged half hard enough. There were too many estimable nice nationalists. With hindsight, but not only with hindsight, …
Keir Starmer whose legal eminence was seen as an asset not so long ago, is now stigmatised as a narrow minded creature of process whose survival is now at stake. You’d think his legal background would give him.a clear advantage when dealing with the Past But instead, the legacy prompts the question: what is it now more about? Law or politics? The long drawn out saga of new British legacy legislation falls between two stools. Too much law for anti …
The verdict isn’t the calamity which gloomier searchers for truth and other investigators may fear. It will have a limited effect. Media managers and their journalists must hold their nerve. In an assessment of the likely fallout, it’s significant that BBC HQ have left the initial corporate response to the Belfast management. In their case the BBC did not plead justification for believing Adams sanctioned Donaldson’s murder. Rather, it argued that publishing the allegation was credible, on the grounds that his reputation …
Sir Declan Morgan, Chief Commissioner, Legacy Commission The Sean Brown case is a perfect example of what can happen when a the legal vacuum is left by the delay in cancelling one Legacy Act and replacing it with a new Act or a radically amended version of the rejected original. By ordering a public inquiry into the Brown murder, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal in effect held that the administrative process replacing legal due process of the Independent Commission …
John Ware has form as a leading investigator into the Troubles for BBC Panorama, including the Stakeknife record and responsibility for the Omagh bomb. His relentless account in the Irish News of the lengths to which the British state was prepared to go to deny the identity of Freddie Scapatticci as Stakeknife has an added significance beyond filling in the details. The fact that his well placed legal sources were prepared to talk in a generally conservative environment speaks volumes. …
