Brian Walker – Page 9 – Slugger O'Toole

It’s strictly dancing up to the Brexit deadline. Meanwhile “the border in the Irish Sea” takes shape in Northern Ireland

Brian Walker on October 20, 2020, 3:13 pm

| Readers 3141

Archbishops’ letter image. FT The off- on- off again dance around the final stages of Brexit negotiations is taking place against a mounting clamour of confusion and anger over the crazy politics including the real implications of the threatened No Deal, about which the UK government postures so insouciantly. UK in a Changing Europe think tank says their modelling with the LSE of the impact of a no-deal Brexit suggests the total cost to the UK economy over the longer …

Covid border measures look like rehearsals for the breakup of the Union

Brian Walker on October 14, 2020, 10:46 pm

| Readers 3982

Photo:The Scotsman Only in corridors of power in London has the latest opinion poll on support for Scottish independence registered a modicum of shock to disturb the prevailing confusion. The analysis of the results by Sir John Curtice contains only one small note of comfort for the Union cause. A new poll from Ipsos MORI for STV has suggested that 58% now say that they would vote Yes in another independence referendum. Just 42% state that they would vote No, and thereby …

It looks like a deal but what sort of deal? And it’ll go down to the wire

Brian Walker on October 14, 2020, 10:11 pm

| Readers 1468

The idea of extended deadlines right down to a supposed last minute will hardly surprise anybody in Northern Ireland. We’ve lived with them for a generation. Taking a tour round comment on the Brexit cliffhanger, the prospects for a deal are looking good. British predictions of going to the wire for a decision by the big beasts of Merkel and Macron look like being fulfilled. But that doesn’t mean an optimal deal for British interests. From Peston The odds of …

Power sharing is coming to England to spread the burden of responsibility for managing Covid. It will affect how the whole UK is governed

Brian Walker on October 10, 2020, 5:09 pm

| Readers 1550

Painfully and suddenly all in a rush, under pressure of the Covid pandemic we’re witnessing the development of power sharing throughout England that has wider implications for the whole UK. The pandemic will stretch well into next year. The infection rate is about to equal or exceed last March’s. The strains imposed on government and by government are tightening. From having a rate of infection per 100,000 people of 11.4 in the week up to August 15, well below the …

Stormont have a great excuse for refusing to implement the abortion law

Brian Walker on October 3, 2020, 9:07 pm

| Readers 1400

In 2019, with the Assembly still under suspension the British government launched a consultation on introducing elective abortion. In the Assembly’s absence Westminster enacted legislation on a free vote opposed mainly by the DUP.1 The context was less about Northern Ireland, more about an anti- Brexit majority moving enough business to keep Parliament open and avoid leaving the EU by default . But the measure passed by an impressive cross party majority in the name of equal rights throughout the …

How Derek Mahon caught our attention

Brian Walker on October 2, 2020, 5:10 pm

| Readers 765

Derek Mahon struggled with an intellectual ambition unexcelled by his Ulster contemporaries, elevating the commonplace into grandeur and striking the contemporary notes of recognition that draw us in. It’s uncanny how that late poem “Everything is Going to All Right,” has shed light on darkness during the pandemic, just as it has been adopted to ease the first shock of suicide for the bereaved. In hands such as Mahon’s, the commonplace phrases are the hand holds that begin to pull …

Notes of optimism from London about the Brexit talks are treated cautiously in Brussels and Dublin. Whatever happens, Northern Ireland won’t be ready

Brian Walker on September 25, 2020, 12:07 pm

| Readers 4630

Briefing on the Brexit negotiations is growing more intense. From the British side, hopes of a breakthrough are reported by the political editor of the Spectator James Forsyth. Inevitably this translates into a British claim that the EU are at last bending on their hitherto implacable insistence on full UK compliance with the Withdrawal Agreement including the Protocol, and the withdrawal of the offending parts of the Internal Market Bill. The EU side are briefing differently but not quite incompatibly; …

So you’re complaining about delays and a forest of forms to clear Larne Harbour? Try the new border permits for Kent

Brian Walker on September 23, 2020, 5:18 pm

| Readers 3618

From the Guardian Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove told MPs today that lorry drivers would need a “Kent Access Permit” to get into the county from 1 January with “police and ANPR cameras [automatic number plate recognition]” enforcing the system. If they failed, they faced queues of up to 700 trucks trying to reach Dover. Under government plans in a leaked document KAPs will only be issued to drivers who have completed all the paperwork necessary to board …

NI’s former Attorney General John Larkin disputes claims that serving or former soldiers are to enjoy immunity from prosecution for torture after five years

Brian Walker on September 23, 2020, 12:58 pm

| Readers 1643

The idea that the new Overseas Operations Bill gives serving and former soldiers immunity against prosecution even for torture is in dispute. It’s claimed that the proposed legislation would create a “triple lock” for troops and veterans, including a presumption against prosecution for alleged offences committed more than five years ago.The bill also proposes to introduce time limits on bringing civil claims in connection with overseas operations; and would place a duty on the government to consider derogating from the …

Why can’t the Johnson government see that pure parliamentary sovereignty is incompatible with the survival of the UK?

Brian Walker on September 15, 2020, 12:02 pm

| Readers 5566

Fintan O’Toole has written another of his entertaining essays trying to get to the bottom of why the UK and the English in particular are behaving like lemmings throwing themselves over a cliff over Brexit. In the Irish Times today he comes with up “England as Ireland.” The big problem with English nationalism is that it is naïve. Because it has been buried for centuries under two layers of disguise – the United Kingdom and the British Empire – it …

This is the very moment to speak out against the old Wolfe Tone trope, that Britain is the source of all Irish ills

Brian Walker on September 14, 2020, 11:17 am

| Readers 5214

Demo in Place de la Républic, Paris As is only to be expected, Chris Donnelly in the Irish News plays the full anti imperialist card against the UK, without regard to variations of interpretation. He uses a French quotation approvingly as if the French were purely the idealists of the Rights of Man and that the revolution had no downside such as the ruinous attempt to conquer all Europe and the French Empire never existed. All major states were born …

Boris Johnson has thrown everything up in the air. The EU has to bring them down to earth

Brian Walker on September 12, 2020, 10:19 am

| Readers 3771

The roller coaster continues. In its story today the Times slips in unattributably Johnson’s terms for a deal. The right of government to subsidise company development is the Trojan horse that has emerged as the biggest obstacle to a deal because it continues to apply to GB as well as NI, leaving a remnant of EU regulation at the heart of the UK that the sovereignty zealots find intolerable. On this apparently esoteric topic depends much of the future character …

Shock tactics won’t help, but they needn’t kill all hopes of reaching a final Brexit deal

Brian Walker on September 10, 2020, 1:44 pm

| Readers 3666

I don’t doubt that UK ministers want a free trade deal and more with the EU. But rather than agree a comprehensive deal on what they regard as the EU terms, they are insisting on defining the terms of resumed British sovereignty first and proposing to bounce their unilateral decisions off the EU case by case as issues arise. The procedure for this is the EU/UK joint committee created by the Withdrawal Agreement which is meeting today. There is also …

Pause a moment. Could Johnson just pull it off?

Brian Walker on September 7, 2020, 4:42 pm

| Readers 5800

The Protocol is a pawn on a bigger game; to remove any trace of involvement by the European Court of Justice in ruling on applications for state aid for ailing or new industries . While that would remain the rule for Northern Ireland firms, it leeches into GB firms who invest or have branches in the North. And that breaches a cardinal Leave principle, of no involvement by the Court in GB affairs. There is surely another a Leave issue …

From Boris Johnson, the honeyed words of a blackmailer or a genuine cry for help?

Brian Walker on September 7, 2020, 10:47 am

| Readers 11453

The alarm has been raised. And while it would be a great mistake to declare it false, it has been followed by calls for calm. The Withdrawal agreement is not about to be torn up and the GFA (according to some interpretations) with it. Rather it’s all about creating smooth passage across the Irish Sea. We’re back at the centre of attention. Really? Surely by signing into national and international law the Withdrawal Agreement with its Ireland/NI Protocol the UK …

United pressure on Sinn Féin may be needed to break the legacy payments deadlock. Their own will benefit

Brian Walker on August 29, 2020, 2:18 pm

| Readers 6197

dFM Michelle O’Neill, Sinn Féin Has Martina Anderson’s outburst distracted attention away from the substantive issue of the legacy payments deadlock, or given a boost to resolving it, following the court case requiring Michelle O’Neill in effect to remove her veto or exercise her option to resign? The scheme covers violence related to the Northern Ireland Troubles between 1966 and 2010, including incidents in Great Britain and Europe.. . People will get between £2,000 and £10,000 a year for the …

What is to be the message of Northern Ireland 100?

Brian Walker on August 26, 2020, 2:51 pm

| Readers 3714

Ulster 71 (archive) Does anybody out there know how plans to mark Northern Ireland’s centenary are progressing? To try to find answers, I’ve been combing the websites and having a few chats, without much luck. Last month, following a few bumbled sentences from Boris Johnson it seemed that the UK government with due regard to the “sensitivities”, were taking the initiative, thus avoiding the potential for another Stormont deadlock. The SoS Brandon Lewis looked forward to.. Following formal acceptance of …

Northern Ireland’s future demands new energy and ideas from the BBC

Brian Walker on August 7, 2020, 11:06 am

| Readers 3146

Denis Bradley writing in the Irish News The atmosphere that has been nurtured on BBC Radio Ulster and Foyle since the peace process has driven away more voices than it has attracted. Only the most vocal of our politicians are regulars. Most clerics avoid it like the plague. Key personnel in many of our most important institutions never appear, most likely out of fear. Many do not feel equipped to partake in an atmosphere that is not always conducive to …

John Hume the lone diplomat rather than party leader has won a special place in the history of these islands

Brian Walker on August 3, 2020, 12:22 pm

| Readers 1656

John Hume photo Irish News It’s the memory of John the person that immediately springs to mind. I believe he came to see himself with the vision and strategy of a man of destiny. But he did so without any of the aura that would have set him apart and made him vulnerable to being taken down. The near sainthood that some have attributed to him must have made him smile. He had a great knack of friendliness even trust …

The new campaign against racism in Britain tells only half the story

Brian Walker on July 30, 2020, 5:11 pm

| Readers 2080

Photograph: Anselm Ebulue / The Guardian Tré Ventour 24 • Northampton • Writer and race equality activist “I remember when Mark Duggan was killed by police. It was my generation’s Stephen Lawrence moment.” From the Guardian Race and racism. Just now we’re going through a surge fomented in the US and probably aggravated on this side of the Atlantic by the frustrations of lockdown and the habit of imitation. Longer term the abiding chronic issues have not been helped by …