Soapbox

This is an address John Gray gave to the Reclaim the Enlightenment’s annual Bastille Day event on the 14th July 2024 One can hardly claim that the United Irishmen were pacifists but did they seek war? True that they were inspired by the fall of the Bastille and the French revolution but their original publicly declared objective was no more than securing a reform of the notoriously corrupt Irish parliament, an objective pursued by open democratic means during 1792. It …

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Ben M is a Slugger reader from Dublin This committee comprises Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and some of the other southern-only parties, as well as Sinn Féin. That’s significant, outside of Leo Varadkar’s recent intervention, I can’t remember such cross-party support for UI preparation. Normally it’s just SF talking about it. I’ve long thought if I were a Unionist what would truly worry me about the UI issue wouldn’t be SF, it would be the southern parties starting a UI-preparation …

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Maurice Macartney is the author of Combinations: Denominations, democracy and the politics of nonviolence, Rowman and Littlefield, 2024 Donald Trump, blood streaking his face, rises above the security agents trying to rush him to safety and raises a fist in defiance. Above the group, against a blue sky, flies the flag of the United States of America. Like it or not, this is going to be the defining image of the US election of 2024, and indeed of this historical …

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Colm Ó Cionnaith is currently a Peace Studies MA student in the HJI Grad School of Peace and Public Leadership and Secretary General of UPF Ireland. Picture it: Oldbridge, Co. Meath, Ireland, July 12th, 2050, unified and at peace with herself and her new identity: green, white and orange; red, white and blue – equally represented and equally proud as they celebrate their contribution to the island’s present as well as the past … the new Defence Forces of the 32 …

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Alan Whysall is a former civil servant in the Northern Ireland Office who advised British ministers throughout the negotiations that led to the 1998 Agreement. He is now an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Unit, specialising in politics in Northern Ireland. He is the author of Northern Ireland: Challenges for the Next Government. A new report from the Constitution Unit, Northern Ireland: Challenges for the Next Westminster Government, is now published. It sets out the challenges in Northern Ireland that will face a …

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Brendan O’Leary, Lauder Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania argues that decisive facts remain absent from the arguments of Professors Coulter and O’Leary. This is the final piece in a fascinating exchange. In their rejoinder to my response Professors Coulter and Shirlow write the academic equivalent of “no surrender.” Namely, they acknowledge no difficulties in their published positions, regret nothing about their past tone, and launch some curious new insults. In short, they take a political rather than a …

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Joshua Smith is a First year student at QUB studying International Relations and Politics, with a keen interest in political journalism Boris Johnson’s pledge to tackle regional inequality may have had limited lasting impact. But Levelling Up vastly predates the current Conservative government. Almost certainly, the policy will outlast Sunak’s premiership too. With a general election set for July 4th, the current ministration is approaching its end. But for one key government policy, delivery has barely begun. Last month’s installation …

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Macha is a Slugger reader from County Armagh… It seems so. In an unprovoked attack on O’Connell Street in Limerick, Cathal Crotty grabbed Natasha O’Brien by the hair, knocked her to the ground and beat her unconscious. Crotty was an off duty private in the Irish Defence Forces when he perpetrated this violence, Ms. O’Brien reportedly asked him to stop shouting homophobic slurs at people. Unremorseful after the event, he later boasted on Snapchat “Two to put her down, two …

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Brendan O’Leary is the Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania Professors Coulter and Shirlow are unnecessarily rude, and conspiratorial. The suggestion that I read from a “script” produced by the organizers among Ireland’s Future is false, and mildly insulting. No one suggested what I should say, and those who know me regard me as my own person. As far as I know no one at the conference was guided let alone instructed on what to say. …

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Obelisk is a Slugger reader from County Tyrone In launching her party’s manifesto, Alliance leader and East Belfast candidate Naomi Long emphasised that she felt the ‘honeymoon period’ for the return of Stormont has ended. People now want results, less excuses and more competence, which can be considered an awkward contrast given the controversy now dogging the Justice Minister over a recent botched piece of legislation. On June 1st the High Court in Belfast overturned the law in question which …

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Ben M is a slugger reader from Dublin I’ve long thought conflating the unification issue with SF distorts it. A border poll, and the preparations that precede it will be dominated by a wider range of Irish political, state, and civic entities, of which SF will merely be a part. So when many people talk of unification in terms of SF, I think the question most worth asking isn’t about them, it’s – ‘When will the rest of Ireland decide …

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Jérôme à Paris is a French investment banker specialising in large scale energy projects  and was a regular  contributor on energy topics in the early days of Daily Kos – the main US liberal political blog – and also founded the European Tribune to focus on European issues. Nowadays he focuses on financing renewable energy projects and writes occasional blogs to counteract widespread public misunderstandings of renewable energy often propagated by oil and nuclear industry interests. Key themes include the …

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Ben M is a slugger reader from Dublin Nigel Farage’s last-minute entry into the UK election is the latest manifestation of the rise of right-wing populism, but it’s happening in lots of other places too. All across Europe, and with Trump in America. Some people thought Ireland was immune, but it seems not. There are a huge number of such candidates for the upcoming euro & local election, though how they perform remains to be seen. One aspect of this …

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Eamonn Duffin is a local writer, Tyrone native and long term resident of Belfast. A recent graduate of the QUB Creative Writing MA, his work is soon to be featured in Belfast’s newest literary adventure, The Belfast Review. The Irish News of May 21st reports that The Cathedral Quarter Trust (CQT) has “formally objected to Castlebrooke Investments’ bid to renew four applications for its stalled development, and urged others to do likewise,” saying it believes that Castlebrooke “has no intention …

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Anna Mercer is the Deputy Director of Strategem. You can follow her on Twitter… There has been a lot of chat about what the first 100 days has and hasn’t achieved since the restoration of the NI Executive and Assembly. While milestones are important, the irony is not lost on bemoaning the emphasis on the PR optics that came thick and fast from the First and deputy First Ministers office, whilst using the PR opportunity that a nice round figure …

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