Brian Walker

If Ed Curran is right, stuffing the Executive’s faces with gold will not be enough. In an important article that goes against the grain of all the external pressure to devolve justice and policing, the former Belfast Telegraph editor defends Peter Robinson’s tardiness, newly expressed in an interview with Noel McAdam, recorded after the Brown financial package was offered. Ed now seems to be writing off the Executive as a lame duck, with its “ mind numbing inertia,” and yet …

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A confrontation is hotting up between the legal establishment and politicians of both main UK parties over the future of what has become a fundamental document of the UK’s uncodified constitution, the Human Rights Act. This has implications for Northern Ireland. The Conservatives identify what they see as key flaws in the workings of the Act and are pledged to replace it with a new British Bill of Rights. Labour have clashed with the judges but are divided over Jack …

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The Church of Ireland has always been comfortable with its Protestant identity and has played down the fact of Anglicanism as a whole’s far more complex nature as both “high” and “low” church, Anglo Catholic and evangelical, and several stages in between. The world wide Communion led by the Archbishop of Canterbury had seemed to be holding together, just about, despite the chasm that opened up over gays and women as priests and bishops. But now and with minimum notice …

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In the SNP’s 75-year history, we have never been closer to our objective of independence for our nation.” So boasts Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond at the SNP party conference. But what kind of independence has this become? One which remains a “social union” with the rest of the UK, sharing embassies abroad, even currency, and even armed forces, minus nuclear bases on the Clyde. Magnus Linklater, doyen Scots columnist, rates this as a sign of growing maturity with a …

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It was a fair cop when Peter Hain slated BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat for its handling of the ambush on air by BNP leading activists posing as “ordinary” BNP supporters – whoever they are, although I feel more than a twinge of sympathy for the producers who fell into the trap. Yet again though, the BBC’s first line of defence has proved to be inept. Far better to have been straighforward and admit they didn’t recognise the names in a …

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I remain puzzled as to why Hillary Clinton bothered. What was in it for her? And yet in a whistle stop between Saturday-it –must- be- Zurich for the Turkish-Armenian patch-up, Sunday stop-overs in London, Chequers and Phoenix Park and Tuesday in Moscow on Iranian sanctions, she spent the longest period in one place in Belfast yesterday. Yes, I understand the drive for peace gave a fresh focus to Irish America that Bill was able to exploit in 1992-3. Today she …

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The Belfast Telegraph’s “sort it out” on line petition over the academic selection deadlock seems to be having some impact, much as the local politicians might want to deny it. Only Sinn Fein are mulishly holding out against this unexceptionable demand. Last week, amazingly, the representatives couldn’t find time to get together. But now they’re deigning to do so at last and interparty talks seem set to take place this forthcoming week among all the other parties, leaving SF playing …

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Behind the political bellwether issue of policing and justice lies the far more fundamental one of a shared future. Is the Executive going to adopt an integrationist approach or not? Robin Wilson, an acute observer of the theme, gives his bleak analysis. The default position remains one of mutual apartheid. The DUP and Sinn Fein are into yet another round of the blame game. The DUP’s Building a Better Future raids the basic analysis in the Harbinson report and deploys …

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Now you know what the headline is. Cameron gave the cautious speech of a potential Prime Minister who didn’t dare count his chickens, not a rouser on the eve of victory. The central argument of the Leader’s speech was that under Labour: It is not that Big Government has failed to solve some problems, it has helped to cause them” Meanwhile the latest YouGov poll taken before the speech shows a cut in the Conservartive lead of six per cent.Three …

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What Reg Empey called “ the beginning of a beautiful friendship” was given a modest lift at the Conservative conference this morning in the low level opening “Great Britain” session that launched off a day due to be dominated by David Cameron’s Leader’s Speech. You know it’s low level because the little sit-down talks aren’t posted on the conference website and all the speakers except Reg didn’t get up from their deep white armchairs to speak. Indeed poor Reg didn’t …

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Anybody in NI seriously interested in improving schools’ performance at the bottom end, should pay attention to the reforms for England, heralded by the Conservative education spokesman Michael Gove. First thing to note is that his ideas for a big expansion of self-governing academies and technical colleges share a good deal of common ground with Labour. So ignore the party heat over this; the main English parties are not too far apart. And secondly, note well that Gove spurns any …

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At a stroke, the Conservatives may have “solved” the political equivalent of Fermat’s last theorem, the West Lothian Question. That’s the conundrum about what to do to remove the anomaly of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland MPs’ right to vote on purely English (or English and Welsh) matters while English MPs have no say over matters devolved to Holyrood, Stormont and in a some areas, Cardiff Bay. The party must hope they’ve lanced a boil which was incubating an “England …

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So the battle of the cuts has begun. What will be the ailing local regime’s response to Alistair Darling’s freeze on senior civil service pay? While the freeze presumably applies to the NIO, what will be the impact on the separate NICS, for whom you’ll already have to pay an extra £100m next year because of the little matter of the staggering failure to apply equal pay rules?. I expect Stormont will be caught in the headlights. But welfare and …

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So fundamentalism is rearing its head on either side of the water, on the twin neuralgic themes of justice and policing at Stormont and UK membership of the EU at the Conservative conference in Manchester. Malachi (in a welcome return to the Bel Tel) projects the speculation all the way to a snap Assembly election . I leave detailed assessment to others closer to the action, but I can’t help feeling all we’re getting is some pretty rough sparring bouts, …

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This is a specially scathing comment of referendum victor Brian Cowen’s declaration of support on Sky News for Tony Blair as first (semi) permanent President of the EU Council when the Treaty is finally ratified. Do people really think it proves Cowen is a British lap-dog? And that the Taoiseach’s praise the former PM’s achievements in the peace process is old hat now? Brian WalkerFormer BBC journalist and manager in Belfast, Manchester and London, Editor Spolight; Political Editor BBC NI; …

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In the fluctuating fortunes of the MSM, this one is a real biggy. The London Evening Standard is going freesheet. Now owned by a Russian mogul who’s given it three years, the metro afternoon paper with national pretensions is dropping its 50p cover price and going for free. The shock has registered internationally where the Standard’s fortunes will be watched keenly. Yet the shift is not quite as big as the headline suggests. About half its 250,000 and falling circulation …

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Just to keep the chain going, I pass on via an email from Jeff Dudgeon Newton Emerson’s latest in the Irish News on the profligacy of public sector recruitment in the light of the tsunami that ‘s about to hit them. ( Irish News subs reqd. Three days after publication, I hope Noel Doran won’t object). “The front pages of the newspapers are filled with warnings of shortfalls, cutbacks and rate rises. Meanwhile, in the job pages, it is non-business …

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Bill Emmott, former editor of the Economist makes the best case for the Tories to abandon their qualified pledge to hold a UK referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. The real case for voting Yes tomorrow comes from Dan O’Brien below. These two pieces are about authentic Big Picture politics neither Ireland nor the UK can afford to ignore, however poorly the Treaty is regarded. There is a bonus point for the Irish in shaping a big part of the course …

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As the signs grow that a dying Labour government will gift Eames- Bradley to the Tories and the fundamentally divided local parties, the lawyerly independent group Committee for the Administration of Justice has come out with a bold “rights based “ approach to dealing with the past. The committee clearly fears that Labour in the form of the oleaginous Shaun Woodward ( with the very deepest respect”) will continue to push the soft options of story telling and clearing up …

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At this distance in London, I’m getting mixed messages about the future of the Executive. On the one hand, I sit up and take notice when as seasoned a commentator as Ed Curran fears it may be sinking. On the other, when even Sammy Wilson declares the devolution of policing and justice to be a DUP objective , I’m not exactly comforted – there are plenty of gets-outs in that – but I chalk up a modest positive. The big …

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