Government – Page 12 – Slugger O'Toole

What any new UK PM needs to do halt British economic decline…

Mick Fealty on July 15, 2022, 5:26 pm

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decline, road sign, warning

Not commenting on a party leadership race that will likely take the rest of the summer to complete, but I want to highlight some questions the new Prime Minister will have to tackle (and any successor). It’s courtesy of Torsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation who identifies five key metrics that will have to be confronted in order to address the UK’s current economic decline: Lesson 1: Face up to the fact that Great Britain is in relative decline. Having …

Embedding the protocol within a constitutional/identity gridlock undermines our shared future

Terry Wright on July 12, 2022, 4:48 pm

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hd wallpaper, nature wallpaper, red meerkat

Unionism cannot be boxed into one definition, however broad opinion, within the pro-Union and the middle ground Unionist constituency, beyond loyalism, the Orange Order, bonfire groups and attendees at pre-election rallies, is hardening towards the ‘Protocol’. It is now firmly rooted within constitutional and identity issues; not viewed as a destination but as a process shaped by EU rigidity that will take Unionism to a divergent and politically homeless place where it does not wish to reside. Talk of protecting …

Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price on Celtic working and European democracy

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 10, 2022, 10:30 am

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Last Friday, I filmed and live-streamed a fascinating lecture by the Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price, delivered in Dublin to an assembled and online hybrid audience for the Irish Association for Contemporary European Studies. Fascinating for a number of reasons. I rarely hear any local discussion of devolution in Wales, other than noting that they have fewer policy areas devolved than Scotland and Northern Ireland. A talk more than a decade ago demonstrated how the Senedd was ahead of other …

Beware the celebrity journalist Prime Minister selling “big, blaring dramatic stories” …

Mick Fealty on July 8, 2022, 2:51 pm

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Waxwork of Boris Johnson on display at Madame Tussauds, Marylebone, London, England.

Six years ago, Nick Cohen penned the best analysis not of Brexit, but rather the public reaction of the ‘reformed’ journalists, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove who fronted its clinching arguments: …they gazed at the press with coffin-lid faces and wept over the prime minister they had destroyed. David Cameron was “brave and principled”, intoned Johnson. “A great prime minister”, muttered Gove. Like Goneril and Regan competing to offer false compliments to Lear, they covered the leader they had doomed …

Boris Johnson to resign but how can he hope to limp on until Autumn with a half empty cabinet?

Mick Fealty on July 7, 2022, 9:52 am

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boris johnson, politician, prime minister

Turns out it was not just Brandon, Mr Johnson is going too, but not until the autumn…. It will bring to an end one of the shortest lived Prime Ministerships in British history (3 out of 8 from the last 20 years)… Your guess is as good anyone’s in the Conservative party as to who will follow him. After winning an 80 seat majority with an unlikely pro Brexit coalition, Johnson is now facing the exit. Phenomenally though, and it’s …

What can the 2022 Australian elections tell us about the future of U.K, and Northern Irish politics?

Soapbox on June 30, 2022, 11:55 am

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opera house vivid sydney 2017

From seismic political shifts to the fall of traditional party allegiance, do Australia's election results foreshadow the future of politics for Western Europe? Joshua Smith writes… The 2022 Australian elections appeared to paint a picture of a more environmentally focused future for the country. Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National coalition was replaced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labour party, suggesting a national shift to the political left. However, the truth may not be as simple as that. Much of the Labour party’s electoral success resulted from …

Can the UK turn its economic ship in the narrow Brexit canal its currently jammed in?

Mick Fealty on June 27, 2022, 3:56 pm

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“It’s all but over for Boris Johnson” says Tom Kelly in his column this morning. He may be right, but I’m not so sure the actually being over is going to come so soon as many Tory insiders now wish it would. But if it presages a distinction between Britain and it’s political leadership, that’s a good thing for inter island relations. Brexit has seen a rise in anti British sentiment unknown since before the ceasefires. It’s coincidence with the …

Micheál Martin: there’s only one way home, and that’s back to the negotiation table.

Mick Fealty on June 22, 2022, 4:35 pm

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One of the great liberations of taking yourself off Twitter and the baleful influence of its audience driving algorithms is not so much what it leaves you read and or watch, but the hyperbole it frees you from. I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that Brexit is failing in execution because its architects may have felt that in just getting the decision made all the rest would follow as a matter of course. A good outcome is hard to achieve …

As the UK plans to rip up Northern Ireland protocol the EU threatens to seem them in court…

Brian O'Neill on June 13, 2022, 6:44 pm

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The FT reports that the EU are not happy bunnies about Boris’s plans to ‘amend’ the NI Protocol. From the article: Brussels threatened legal action against the UK on Monday, as a chorus of criticism greeted Boris Johnson’s plan to unilaterally rip up his 2020 Brexit deal with the EU covering trade with Northern Ireland. The British prime minister insisted that new legislation to override the Northern Ireland protocol was vital to stabilise the peace process in the region and …

Between a Rock and a Hard Place…

Frank Schnittger on June 10, 2022, 11:43 am

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Flags of the member states of the European Union in front of the EU-commission building "Berlaymont" in Brussels, Belgium

Boris Johnson is reported to be delaying the publication of the Bill to over-ride parts of the protocol until such time as the DUP agree to the election of a Speaker in the Assembly. The DUP is refusing to proceed until they see the contents of the Bill and ensure that it directly over-rides the Protocol and doesn’t merely give the power to Ministers to do so at some stage of their choosing. No doubt a compromise will be worked …

Will the NI Protocol Bill trigger a first Tory Vote Strike?

Mick Fealty on June 10, 2022, 10:41 am

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Fascinating analysis on the manoeuvres inside the governing parties, and the first opportunity for the idea of a vote strike against the Northern Ireland Protocol bill due in next week… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

How do we save the Belfast Agreement if we ignore the continual mothballing of its key institutions?

Mick Fealty on June 9, 2022, 6:17 pm

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cows, pasture, alm

Alex Kane this week put into the public domain a question I’ve been thinking about privately a lot since the most recent collapse of Stormont, and is one that has to be answered before there’s any real hope of progress. That is that we really need to take a long and serious look at the workings of the Belfast Agreement, and support what’s worked but to be really clear eyed about its ongoing failure to promote power sharing. Here’s his …

Current chaotic state of UK government does not help NI’s real economic issues with the Protocol…

Mick Fealty on June 8, 2022, 7:52 am

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diploma, parchment, graduation

In a recent, otherwise well informed, discussion the idea came that the DUP is only using the protocol to prolong the time when it will have to accept being deputy First Minister. I had two problems with that. It assumes that the issues around the protocol are trivial (no party in Stormont thinks this), plus the idea that there’s any easy recovery from the current position for the party in any new election is naive to say the least. It …

A reply to Mick’s Stormont reform article…

Soapbox on June 3, 2022, 11:47 am

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Stormont Estate, Belfast, N. Ireland

Stephen Stewart is a Faulknerite unionist currently living in exile from Norn Iron and proudly an analogue person in a digital age. I read with interest Mick’s recent article on possible reform of Stormont, and while it was rather short on possible ideas and suggestions over how to overhaul our clearly-dysfunctional political institutions whilst simultaneously staying within the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, it nonetheless echoed much of what I’ve been thinking about for a while… and to it’s …

Slugger TV looks at the main parties after #AE22

David McCann on June 1, 2022, 4:37 pm

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Slugger TV is five years old! This month Anna Mercer from Stratagem and Chris Donnelly look at the state of the parties following the Assembly Election. David McCannDavid McCann holds a PhD in North-South relations from University of Ulster. You can follow him on twitter @dmcbfs

Our legacy story is little more than “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.

Mick Fealty on May 27, 2022, 1:47 pm

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fire, pot, historical

The most strident opponent of the UK government’s legacy proposals is Sinn Féin, even though members of their wider movement who (highest crime/lowest conviction ratio) stand to benefit most. Go figure? As Hamlet’s mother Queen Gertrude famously drily noted, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks”. It’s all a little bit too careful, too shrewd and too forceful to be entirely convincing. The same party has been porting concessions out of successive British administrations for years which pretty much amount to …

Justice delayed is justice denied – the harms of delay and underbudgeting cannot be ignored

Rachel Woods on May 23, 2022, 4:25 pm

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It might not be the most obvious, or talked about, until something goes wrong, but ensuring effective access to justice is incredibly important for our society and confidence in the rule of law.

Solution to protocol stand off could be an extension of grace periods and experimentation before local consent in 2024…

Terry Wright on May 20, 2022, 2:59 pm

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laptop, office, hand

One of many, Taoiseach, Micheál Martin TD, has talked of a ‘landing zone.’ Fine Gael Senator Emer Currie has referred to there being a solution if we can find one, or words to that effect. Hardly a confidence builder? In Northern Ireland, recently elected MLAs, reflecting the intensity of politics in a small place, are digging themselves deeper into the rutted terrain of blame, counter blame and limited concession on ideological preferences. Arguing themselves into institutionalised confrontation. Reports from London and …

Calls for clarity on border poll criteria…

Brian O'Neill on May 20, 2022, 8:27 am

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green grass near the gray road

From the Irish News: The public should be given clarity on the criteria for calling a poll on Irish unification, Michelle O’Neill has said. The Sinn Féin vice president said there was a need to fill in the “grey” area of the Good Friday Agreement on the circumstances for holding a referendum on constitutional change. Her comments come after Tánaiste Leo Varadkar also called for clarity on the mechanism for calling a poll. Under the terms of the 1998 Good …

Bypass Stormont and empower Councils to help those most in need…

Brian Pope on May 19, 2022, 7:44 am

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https://breakyourboundaries.tv/seeking-human-kindness-print - Prints Available - 25 % proceeds goes to supporting homelessness - I met Michael in a Boston subway station. I told him I liked his sign. “What matters is what it means to you,” he told me.I asked what it meant to him. “Doing a deed or expressing kindness to another person without expecting anything in return,” Michael said.I love approaching strangers wherever I go. Listening and talking to them teaches you about people and how similar we all are to one another. Just like Michael, we’re all seeking human kindness.

Despite Liz Truss’s announcement that the UK government will introduce a new bill to change the post-Brexit trade deal for Northern Ireland, there is absolutely no certainty about how long the current disruption and chaos at Stormont will last. As our devolved government lurches from one crisis to the next there is a necessity to reform the Assembly but there is also a need to keep the wheels on the track and deliver for those most in need. On Monday …