Brian Walker – Page 46 – Slugger O'Toole

Ireland must seek EU permission to make a draft bilateral deal with Britain

Brian Walker on January 18, 2017, 11:15 am

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Dublin reaction to Theresa May’s big Brexit speech is understandably cautious verging on the sceptical. Is more substantial content to be expected when Theresa meets Enda in Dublin next week, no doubt to discuss her hopes that an open-ish border can be achieved through “frictionless “ trading monitored digitally and immigration rules enforced mainly through national insurance and taxation rather than entry points? Probably not, even though the promptness of the visit after the speech is welcome and she has …

Theresa May’s aim of free trade with the EU outside the single market is the way to avoid a hard border. The Irish should start lobbying their EU partners now.

Brian Walker on January 17, 2017, 5:30 pm

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We will put our precious Union at the heart of what we do.. We will strengthen our relationship between the four nations of the UK.. I hope for the same spirit of unity, especially in Northern Ireland and that the parties will establish a new relationship as soon as possible.. The devolved administrations will be fully engaged (in the Brexit process). That is why we have set up a joint ministerial committee.. We have received papers from Scotland and …

Solutions are negotiable, if there’s the political will

Brian Walker on January 17, 2017, 10:21 am

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There’s something stereotypically Irish about a battle between two parties who are not competing for the same votes, were in one sense on the same side – i.e. the same government – and will end up more or less where we are after the Assembly election. Incisive though it is, Mick’s analysis defers the subject of finding a way through the standoff for another time. In my own pitch to CNN, I noted the switch in morale between the DUP …

Is greater Sinn Fein militancy the right answer to wider voter disillusionment?

Brian Walker on January 16, 2017, 10:29 am

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Chris Donnelly’s analysis of Sinn Fein’s position in the Irish News is welcome as an all- too rare piece of criticism from an independent-minded sympathiser. The DUP would do well to emulate it. But self- criticism has a long way to go. The hope must be that behind the scenes amid the bluster of an election campaign, it will continue and produce realistic positions in the end. Chris does not go far as to say that the party has reached …

How will Ireland square the circle of close relations with Brexit Britain and continuing loyalty to the EU?

Brian Walker on January 15, 2017, 8:10 pm

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An Irish government official said to me a few weeks ago: “ we’re with the other guys now.” That arresting comment meant that Ireland was making a necessary shift further away from Britain and towards the continuing relationship with the EU. A binary choice is in prospect, goes the argument, depending on the Brexit outcomes. There was a certain amount of whistling bravado in the remark – perhaps belied by the Irish government’s intense efforts with its continuing EU partners …

British government action not words needed to nudge the parties back to sanity

Brian Walker on January 13, 2017, 5:51 pm

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So the Executive is not quite dead. Or not dead but merely sleeping, The signs of life evident among ministers on both sides (minus an FM and dFM), over the rethink on the modest but totemic Líofa bursary programme, the refinancing of the RHI scheme and mitigating the bedroom tax may be too little too late, or they may suggest a greater willingness to pick up the threads of government after an election than initially feared. We shall see. The …

An election would be an abuse of democracy. Knuckle down after the holiday and learn how to do modern politics.

Brian Walker on December 24, 2016, 1:24 pm

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Even with a fairer wind than we experienced since 1998 , it was always going to be difficult to reconcile natural contention in politics with good cross community government. If all-party government worked well, the Assembly would have very little to do. If government failed, it would only amplify the differences. The select committees were supposed to supply critical scrutiny but lacked skills and were too often the creatures of the dominant party. In an Executive governing largely by rival …

SNP pressure to stay in the single market boosts the UK case. Why not champion these ideas for Northern Ireland?

Brian Walker on December 21, 2016, 11:36 am

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Nicola Sturgeon herself admits there are challenges in the SNP’s proposals to keep Scotland within the single market if the rest of the UK is without. The generous view of the paper Scotland’s Place in Europe is that at least it sets out a position, which is more than the than the UK government has done so far. Witness Theresa May’s stonewalling performance before the Commons Liaison Committee yesterday and the Guardian’s sketch of it. Furthermore the Scottish case could …

The Arlene factor: her abrasive personality is part of a tradition that has had its day

Brian Walker on December 20, 2016, 11:32 pm

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Anger is a factor often overlooked in politics. Les Enragés were the militants who spoke up vituperatively for the poor in the French Revolution. Jihad is the product of demented rage. Dispossession or the threat of it is often the justification for anger. Fear and insecurity are close relatives. Arrogance thinly concealing both is its bedfellow. Anger has been fundamental in our politics and remains an expression of our contested differences from the streets to the pulpit and the debating …

Cheer up for Christmas! Yesterday’s drama showed power sharing is working and is becoming more accountable.

Brian Walker on December 20, 2016, 11:10 am

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Yesterday, the Assembly system did not make a bad situation worse. Many will disagree but I believe all emerged from it quite creditably. While no doubt nervous of being outflanked on the nationalist side by the opposition SDLP, Sinn Fein finally opted for Executive survival despite the trivial charge of kowtowing to the DUP. The choice was a no brainer, although at first cunningly concealed behind a critical amendment too long and off- topic to be accepted for debate …

Arlene Foster triumphant thanks to Sinn Fein. Imagine that!

Brian Walker on December 19, 2016, 6:41 pm

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Arlene won hands down, thanks to Sinn Fein with a little help from the Speaker. True she was always going to win the day as Sinn Fein declined to wield the knife by withdrawing from the Executive on foot of her refusal to step aside, but it was nice for her to be seen to win it too. She didn’t have to be gracious and by God she wasn’t. Magnificently alone apart from her DUP chorus she was allowed to …

Sinn Fein have just let Arlene off the hook. In a few words, crisis over?

Brian Walker on December 19, 2016, 2:01 pm

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Conor Murphy of Sinn Fein ( leadership material that lad), has just said that Sinn Fein will move a motion in the New Year “ which will deal with all these issues and not just the career of one individual.” They would still like Foster to step aside but it doesn’t look like an issue of confidence for them. After Foster’s robust defence, has the air gone out of the crisis balloon, courtesy of Sinn Fein? Interesting that she uttered …

Draft of what Arlene might have said ( admittedly a bit late in the day)

Brian Walker on December 19, 2016, 9:57 am

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“Mr Speaker, Now that I have gone through the narrative of the RHI scheme, I want to come to the heart of the matter of a motion of no confidence. I absolutely refute the charge that I lied about cancelling it or any other aspect of it . My party supports me. But now other parties are challenging my veracity including, in terms, our Sinn Fein partners in government. We agree that a judicial inquiry is needed to clear the …

Genuine power sharing with Sinn Fein would have averted the RHI mini-crisis

Brian Walker on December 18, 2016, 2:13 pm

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Did the BBC snatch or stage Jonathan Bell’s prayer before his confessional trial before Nolan? Either way it resembled nothing more than a man having his head laid on the block and making peace with his Maker before execution (and I don’t mean Nolan). While the mawkishness of the prayerful moment recalls the early Paisley playing the martyr before or after some act of provocation, Bell’s evoking of the DUP’s spiritual origins is unlikely to save him. He is now …

What could outsiders do to end the tragic farce over dealing with the past?

Brian Walker on December 15, 2016, 1:12 pm

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“A big push” on legacy issues is being promised by secretary of State James Brokenshire as the Belfast Telegraph reports, following the failure to meet the deadline to implement the legacy part of Fresh Start. Whether it will mean anything more than UN attempts to end the horrors of Syria remains to be seen. Brokenshire presents himself as an honest broker but in truth whether he realises it or not, he is as much a party to deadlock as the …

FT recommends staying in the customs union to help solve the Irish problem

Brian Walker on December 14, 2016, 8:34 am

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Irish Finance minister Michael Noonan was too hasty in slapping down “a special deal on the side ” between the UK and Ireland in response to the report on Ireland and Brexit from the Lords EU committee. He spoke even as it was admitted that Ireland would probably be worse affected than Britain. This is no time to reject any well-intentioned idea for resolving what is probably the single most difficult problem of Brexit. The committee was also right to …

Jim Prior may have been doomed to fail but he had plenty of help from the locals

Brian Walker on December 13, 2016, 3:42 pm

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It’s a natural reflex to blame the Brits and indeed, there’s a good case to be made for it time and again. But the career locally of Jim Prior, the senior Conservative who was secretary of state from October 1981 to September 1984, a month before the Brighton Bomb, is stark evidence that the time for conciliation had not yet come and conventional politics was impotent. The best Jim Prior obit is written by the veteran Julia Landon in the …

Brexit requires a special deal for Ireland say the Lords, and the Executive cannot stay aloof. That means you, Arlene

Brian Walker on December 12, 2016, 3:51 pm

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In the first of six reports on Brexit the House of Lords committee on the EU recommend that the British and Irish governments should negotiate a new bilateral agreement to minimise the impact of Brexit on British-Irish and North-South relations. This will be welcomed as the first serious attempt by British legislators to cut through the thicket of thorny problems particular to both parts of Ireland. As the Guardian reports, the Lords EU Committee “touches lightly” on the Good Friday agreement. It …

Shame on the politicians for allowing the PSNI to become the victims of a tabloid firestorm over army prosecutions

Brian Walker on December 9, 2016, 12:20 pm

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A tabloid storm blown up by the Sun and the Mail with the Daily Telegraph in tow has been set off to save hundreds, perhaps thousands of “our boys” – the soldiers who served in the Troubles – from the “ witch hunt” of being singled out as a class for prosecution as a result of Army action in the Troubles. The surge probably owes more to the establishment campaign against prosecutions over Iraq – one case now being the …

While the Supreme Court continues the agenda moves on. A hard Brexit looks more and more likely and the future of the Irish border is in the balance.

Brian Walker on December 8, 2016, 11:31 am

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The Financial Times (£) says it all in the editorial quoted at some length below – or most of it. If Theresa May had introduced a simple bill granting MPs a vote on Article 50, the November High Court case and the appeal to the Supreme Court would not have happened. What it doesn’t say is that the UK government look like triggering Article 50 before the end of March to leave the single market and the customs union. They …