Brian Walker – Page 10 – Slugger O'Toole

Why is the UK sleepwalking into final Brexit chaos and towards breakup?

Brian Walker on July 17, 2020, 2:40 pm

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As the notional deadline of October for final Brexit negotiations draws ever closer, the clouds if anything are growing darker. The UK’s statements on their withdrawal position and the NI protocol have clarified very little. Johnson and co seem like General de Gaulle in 1940, holding out for an impossible position of victory against the odds. But at least de Gaulle had allies. A City University webinar I linked up with yesterday confirmed growing pessimism over Northern Ireland prospects.( video …

It would be a mistake for Unionists to seek terms for Irish unity now. There’s a bigger future to discuss

Brian Walker on July 10, 2020, 1:09 pm

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The time, therefore, has finally come for unionists, particularly those in Northern Ireland, to consider the terms on which they could tolerate, if not accept, a united Ireland… On the eve of Northern Ireland’s centenary next May, Unionism needs to form an assembly of its own to answer that question. So what should unionism demand in exchange for its tolerance of unification? First, let’s acknowledge that unionism holds a pretty decent hand should it care to play it: the knowledge …

From united Ireland to a united island to a shared island. What’s in a phrase?

Brian Walker on July 2, 2020, 11:34 am

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an Taioseach Micheál Martin On the grand coalition’s approach to the Irish future, the Trinity academic Etain Tannam has noticed important changes in the final version of the Programme for Government The final version in June differed quite significantly from the draft version in April. The 2020 Programme for Government provides a detailed long-term plan and creates a new unit in the Department of the Taoiseach to ‘work towards a consensus on a shared island.. The 2020 Programme for Government provides a detailed long-term plan and …

Customs? Of course not.. but Checks are another matter. Is this what “frictionless” means?

Brian Walker on July 2, 2020, 11:22 am

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The Guardian’s Lisa O’Caroll has been leaked a “ sensitive” HMRC paper revealing that “firms in Great Britain will be obliged to complete three rounds of customs, security and transit forms on all goods. The electronic documents will need to be completed whether there is a Brexit trade deal or not and will apply to all suppliers. Praising the Guardian for its revelations, the Alliance MP Stephen Farry tweets: UKG should be providing such info directly. This document only addresses some of the …

The New Deal was about more than a phrase, Boris. Michael Gove knows it and is bidding to be the government’s man of substance

Brian Walker on June 30, 2020, 5:34 pm

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Photo: The Guardian We knew in advance where Boris Johnson got “Rooseveltian” from. The inspiration came from Michael Gove, his friend and sometime rival who pre-announced Boris’s “bonanza” and gave him a sort of intellectual alibi in his Ditchley lecture last week. Johnson has the spectre of 3 million unemployed hanging over him and has had to think of something quick. Other than borrowing the phrase, he baulks at a New Deal. He warms up the old Tory manifesto, throws …

“No need for the talks to drag on to the autumn”.. but still the British are busking it

Brian Walker on June 19, 2020, 7:01 pm

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To return to the game of chicken with the EU.. Michael Gove. The argument we’re making to the EU as well is, if you insist on significant new infrastructure and a significant new presence, what you will do is actually make the protocol less acceptable to the majority community in Northern Ireland and therefore you run the risk of the protocol being voted down in a future election,” Michael Gove told the House of Commons Northern Ireland affairs committee. EU …

Survey evidence shows unionists and nationalists supporting power sharing at home and waiting on developments outside

Brian Walker on June 18, 2020, 10:31 am

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Just under 60% of Catholics in Northern Ireland now categorise themselves as nationalist compared with 50% two years ago. 67% of Protestants now classified themselves as unionist compared with 55% in 2018. After the past year of political trauma the big surprise in the NI Life and Times Survey for 2019 is not that there has been a hardening of political allegiances but that this has failed to polarise opinion for their finally incompatible causes. The remarkable fact is that …

Despite the posturing brinkmanship, a deal with the EU is on the cards

Brian Walker on June 17, 2020, 4:49 pm

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I can’t think of a negotiation between governments anywhere, anytime in history where the suppliant used the threat to damage themselves as a negotiating ploy if they didn’t get their own way. Yet this has seemed to be Boris Johnson’s position as PM all along over Brexit. First there was the about turn over the backstop to accept a harsher frontstop ( at least for Northern Ireland); giving the EU all they wanted in the withdrawal agreement and then pretending …

Is a Universal Basic Income from the magic money tree the antidote to recession?

Brian Walker on June 16, 2020, 1:51 pm

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1930s jobless queue. ” Buddy can you spare a dime”? With the mother of all recessions about to hit us we’re told, who can be blamed if we search frantically for magic bullets as furlough payments taper off? A universal basic income is one of them. Go for it says veteran commentator Simon Jenkins, usually one to save public money from big public spending schemes. Rishi Sunak must think radically. There is no point in saddling individuals, companies or future …

Action not another inquiry is needed to tackle the Troubles’ legacy as well as the legacy of slavery

Brian Walker on June 16, 2020, 12:20 pm

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Fintan O’Toole has turned his attention to support a new proposal for dealing with the legacy. While well intentioned, this one has a flavour of rummaging in the bottom drawer for an idea. The proposal (which I have signed, along with many others) is a product of widespread consultation with victims, with combatants from all sides and with people in politics and academia. The nub of it is conditional amnesty: a system in which those with personal knowledge of violent …

Next with Covid 19. Is it the economy, stupid?

Brian Walker on June 15, 2020, 10:06 am

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Newspaper subs are calling it “Manic Monday.” Are they right? How is it with you? Flash in the pan or setting a trend? This week marks the landmark of a return to shopping, the essential activity for economic revival while Covid is still active. It throws into relief the stark choice everybody hopes to finesse – health or wealth? The need for a strategy for revival is as vital as one for easing out of lockdown. In the UK neither …

Anti-racism must not become a new form of cultural oppression

Brian Walker on June 13, 2020, 3:21 pm

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Laurence Oliver’s Othello ( 1965) Although from today we in England can create our own family bubble of different households, it’s still not too late to enter the lockdown confessional. I am not for a moment about to challenge the central aims of Black Lives Matter, or persistent discrimination at work or even what seems to me to be the intractable problem of race as an identifier of knife crime suspects in stop and search. I hope I’m sensitive to …

Removing statues is a revolutionary gesture. Is that what’s needed?

Brian Walker on June 9, 2020, 4:52 pm

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Queen Victoria being removed from the front of the Dail Fergus on Monday nailed it. In the current atmosphere the statue of Oliver Cromwell speaks for itself. Perched in front of Westminster Hall the Victorians who erected it were celebrating the victory of Parliament over the royal tyrant Charles 1. But even leaving aside the massacres of Drogheda and Wexford, this distorts Cromwell’s record. He sent the troops in to expel Parliament not once but twice and instead ruled …

Between the constraints of collapsing lockdown and the exhilaration of anti- racist protest, which would you choose?

Brian Walker on June 7, 2020, 8:30 pm

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BLM. Woe betide you if you need the acronym explained. The tide of Black Lives Matter protest has swept across the Atlantic and across the world, following in the wake of Covid 19. Point out the risk of mass infection caused by close encounter at demonstrations and you risk being called a closet racist by some. Politicians are gambling that there won’t be a second spike despite clear warnings from the north of England. For so many young people champing …

Can Belfast be saved?

Brian Walker on June 6, 2020, 2:19 pm

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I’ve picked up a tweet linking to a devastating critique of the physical state of Belfast by the Belfast based architect Mark Hackett written last year. On my visits home I tend to tramp a few selected streets in my old stomping grounds of the Troubles. Naturally enough I also take in one of two of the tastefully named “Quarters,” the designation intended to preserve and develop what remains of the character of the city. My impression is of a …

From Northern Ireland to the US, from 1968 to today, the camera is a powerful catalyst for change

Brian Walker on June 5, 2020, 6:31 pm

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The horrific image of policemen in Minneapolis caught in the act of slowly choking George Floyd to death has prompted the thought : how different would have been the course of the Troubles if they’d been waged under the eyes of 24/7 live news coverage and video cameras with sound on mobile phones? Would a whole race of citizen journalists, citizen terrorists and citizen security forces have been created all videoing each other like crazy? Might violence amounting to …

Greater vision and laser-like focus on reality are needed if we are to emerge well out of the Covid and Brexit crises

Brian Walker on June 4, 2020, 11:06 am

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David Frost, UK, and Michel Barnier, EU, chief negotiators Imposing a unenforceable quarantine on visitors to the UK from other countries with lower death rates. Forcing MPs to vote in person to set an example for a return to work. Even in the midst of crisis – or especially? – irrationality plays a great part in politics as is does in human nature generally. Somewhere there was a germ of a point that got overtaken by time and circumstances. The …

Stormont has just performed better than Westminster. Signs of a new era dawning for the Northern Ireland Assembly

Brian Walker on June 3, 2020, 12:10 am

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Social distance voting at Westminster. Just as Westminster makes an ass of itself over voting against digital voting, Stormont enters a more hopeful new era. It’s complicated, even tortuous, but that’s a positive virtue compared to the old familiar choice between deadlock and carve up. Correction I earlier reported the voting wrongly for lack of information. It was even more complicated than I supposed. I’m indebted to Sam McBride of the Newsletter for explaining how the DUP and Sinn Fein …

Abortion as an individual human right or by the will of a majority? The NI Assembly wants to “send a signal”

Brian Walker on June 2, 2020, 3:47 pm

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Heidi Crowter, anti-abortion campaigner Do the new regulations permitting abortion in Northern Ireland extend to foetal abnormalties like Down’s syndrome or not? Behind the question is a constitutional argument over whether Westminster had the moral right to enact an abortion law over the heads, even when they were in suspension. But although the DUP and SF seem to be in broad agreement, they seem to be content to win two separate majorities by designation rather than go for an overall …

Gerry Adams’ “illegal detention” Supreme Court ruling needs correction by Parliament to prevent hundreds of compensation claims

Brian Walker on June 2, 2020, 1:44 pm

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Gerry Adams’ victory in obtaining a Supreme Court ruling against the legality of his detention without trial followed by his escape from the Maze in 1975 has produced serious opposition within the establishment. The ruling rests on a technicality with potentially wide implications, that the interim custody order made against him hadn’t been signed personally by the secretary of state Willie Whitelaw. To a lay person this ruling seems more than slightly bonkers; but its defenders will argue that the …