Mick Fealty 
Every July, blue and red pallets go up in flames on loyalist bonfires across Belfast. The theft is brazen, the impunity is total, and the cultural defence is well rehearsed. But behind the smoke lies a harder question — who is actually running this politics, and what do they gain from ensuring nothing ever changes?
Cracks are emerging on the Irish left, with Labour, the Social Democrats and People Before Profit all signalling reservations about Sinn Féin’s policy direction ahead of the next election.
The debate about Stormont’s future is asking the wrong question. The real issue is whether nationalism has the honesty to tell a younger generation what constitutional change actually requires — and the institutional competence to prove it can govern in the meantime.
The border poll arithmetic is simple: nationalism cannot win it alone. The votes needed sit with people who want competent government, not constitutional drama. So why, after twenty-five years in power, is there so little evidence of the former and so much of the latter?
Data is not a mirror. It does not simply reflect reality back at us — it selects, frames, and in doing so, inevitably excludes. The most powerful use of data is not confirmatory but exploratory: the patient, unglamorous work of tracking real changes in real communities, driven by genuine curiosity about what’s happening rather than what we hope or assume to be true. When data is used to justify decisions already made, it stops being a tool for understanding, becoming …
Rory McIlroy has spent his career answering questions that have nothing to do with golf. Which flag. Which anthem. Which side. And yet here he is. Again. The best in the world.
Wages are up 8% and child poverty is among the lowest in the UK. So why is Northern Ireland’s political culture still fluent only in failure? Three uncomfortable questions for Stormont — filtered through Klein, Thompson, Lonergan, Blyth, and Lanier.
Mick looks at Claire Hanna’s direct if deliberately modest assault on the St Andrews settlement with three targeted institutional reforms — and she has done so at precisely the moment Sinn Féin can least afford the scrutiny.
After thirty years of post-Agreement politics, support for a united Ireland hasn’t moved. The border poll debate needs a reality check — and only one party has worked out what a credible long-term strategy actually looks like.
Northern Ireland house prices have surged 45% since the pandemic, with regional districts like Derry and Ards outperforming Belfast. Mick explores how infrastructure bottlenecks and a “catch-up” effect are driving this record growth.
While Northern Republicanism remains preoccupied with the “semiotics” of defiance and historical score-settling, the dream of a 32-county state is stalling and the divergences between North and South are widening. If the Good Friday Agreement was meant to be a bridge, why has it been turned into a trench? Mick argues it’s time to trade 19th-century tactics for 21st-century statecraft.
The row over the Ulster Banner at the 2026 Commonwealth Games must be one the shortest crisis in recent NI history, but it proves that while it doesn’t take much to NI’s successful sporting arena into a political minefield, only time, work and unending commitment can bring the generative change needed to make Northern Ireland a warm house for all.
My previous post has helped spark an interesting debate elsewhere. What seems to have piqued that interest was my view that since 2016 (the last time there was an actual three year budget) there’s been a loss of seriousness within the two senior parties about doing government particularly in comparison to administrations led by those same parties prior to 2016. The fiscal black hole both now face didn’t come from nowhere. Although there is a case to argue that austerity …
When is a budget not a budget? Answer when it’s a ghost budget. That’s the term the SDLP opposition leader Matthew O’Toole used yesterday to describe a few pages of rushed homework the Finance Minister John O’Dowd is choosing to call a budget. This downright weird exercise in PR comes before any of his Executive colleagues had a chance to look at how he proposes to deal with their collective bids. So, in effect O’Dowd is breaking collective responsibility in …
In the final episode of the first series of the Slugger Cato Project, we sat down with DUP MLA and former Minister Diane Dodds. For those new to the series, this project is a shared inquiry into the mechanics of government—specifically those corners of the Northern Ireland Assembly that often remain hidden from public view. Before diving into Diane’s insights, it is worth reflecting on the feedback from last week’s conversation with Sinn Féin’s Pat Sheehan. The response from our …
The Slugger Cato Project is an inquiry hosted by Mick Fealty, and is dedicated to exploring the less-visible aspects of governance and political action in Northern Ireland. It aims to investigate the inner workings of the Stormont government, analysing how politicians navigate bureaucratic systems and fulfil their representative roles. This series is an active investigation, shedding light on the mechanics of modern governance that often remain obscured. Our readers’ contributions have already given us much food for thought. “Finaghy” introduced the …
In the Slugger Cato Project, our mission is clear, and even a little bit ambitious. It’s not simply to spotlight voices you might not typically hear from – though we often will. Our true purpose is to delve into the often frustrating interface between the public and the democratic institutions that were established under the Belfast, or Good Friday, Agreement. It’s a system designed for peace, which often struggles with the practicalities of good government (see Brian’s Panto analogy below). …
The way I originally conceived this project was as a sort of shared inquiry, where the active audience(s) of Slugger would play as much of a role in uncovering actionable insights from these individual episodes as the interviewees themselves. This helps us to fill out the context of a wider landscape and it’s no coincidence that that three of the commenters I’ve picked to introduce this episode are either expats living in London, or a native of the other island …
A feature, or bug is simply a difference between the product you have and the product you want. –Ernest Mueller The last episode (released on Thursday) sparked a pleasingly positive response from the Slugger Community, if not exactly breaking all records in terms of a ton readership. It seems we struck a nerve. For too long, the prevailing narrative has been that Stormont is merely a dysfunctional “clown show.” But as our commenter Babyface pointed out, while slagging everything off …
Over the summer and the autumn I’ve been quietly working away talking to a small number of cross party backbenchers about the work they do in the Assembly as part of a new project we call the Slugger Cato Project. Cato the Younger was famous not for seeking power, but for relentlessly challenging it. He was a symbol of integrity, independence, and defiant courage—a citizen who demanded the highest standards from his government. Now it seems the wider media is …
