Casement Park is demolished and unbuilt, and the SDLP is fighting a sitting MLA in its own ranks. The nationalist vote has barely moved since 1998, even as unionism has declined. Now Jon Burrows is talking up Northern Ireland’s future and challenging Michelle O’Neill to debate it. Nationalism talks up an imminent border poll but has no policy map to get there.
On Saturday morning, delegates at the DUP conference in La Mon Hotel were talking a lot more about the Friday night after-dinner entertainment from ABBA Duo and the conga line than the forthright words of Reform MP Danny Kruger (who also guest starred six months ago at the TUV conference). Many speakers referenced the 229 days remaining until the polls open next year. While the campaign has been running for some time – does it ever stop in modern politics? …
The Linen Hall Library in Belfast hosted the final event in its five-part series marking the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. The talk, introduced by Patsy Horton, the library’s cultural programmer, was delivered by David Orr, Castle and Collections Manager at Hillsborough Castle and Gardens. His subject was Benjamin Franklin’s 1771 visit to Ireland and his stay at Hillsborough Castle — a meeting whose consequences, Orr argued, reverberate through three centuries of diplomacy. The series was supported …
Emergency general surgery left Enniskillen in December 2022, weeks after Stormont fell and with no minister in post to answer for it. Nearly four years on, the Trust says outcomes improved, its own consultants dispute the figures, and the regulator has quietly reversed the recommendation it once called urgent.
A Garvaghy Road march in current circumstances would achieve little beyond sectarian turbulence. But the Parades Commission’s flawed decision-making has left it damaged goods too — and the way out is new appointments and a cultural accord governing all parades, protests and public events.
Queen’s University Belfast’s Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice hosted the launch of the first Northern Ireland Peace Index (NIPI). The Index is the result of a partnership between QUB and the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), an independent, non-partisan global think tank headquartered in Sydney. Funded by UKRI through the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the investigators are Dr Andrew Thomson and Professor Dominic Bryan. The IEP team was led by Dr Paulina Pijacka and Dr David Hammond, with Brett Savill, IEP’s …
Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann came to Belfast for the first time and drew a crowd that may make it the biggest ever held. It also put Ulster Scots music in front of an all-island audience and got a DUP deputy First Minister speaking Irish. Ten things the week told us, and one it didn’t.
The latest LucidTalk poll gets read as unionism in decline. Look at the blocs instead: unionism’s problem is fragmentation, nationalism’s is quieter and harder, and both the DUP and Sinn Féin are both paying for a partnership that delivers nothing.
France’s climate convention implemented 58% of its proposals and reached 78% public awareness, proof a citizens’ assembly can work when a state gives it real authority and resourcing. Sinn Féin’s defeated unity bill had neither, and a wider, patient conversation would serve the question better than a set-piece assembly ever could.
It looks like we are a couple of weeks out from a new Prime Minister in the UK. There’s been plenty of commentary about Andy Burnham and what he may bring to the table when, as seems inevitable, he takes over in mid-July. But what about Northern Ireland ? Burnham is making a major set-piece speech tomorrow about his economic plans, and we know that devolving more power to regions across the UK is something he has strong views on. …
During a week dominated by Jeffrey Donaldson’s conviction, a quieter story slipped past: the Irish Government’s Shared Island Initiative passed €1 billion in commitments to 2030. From a Stormont cricket ground to a sub-two-hour Belfast–Dublin train, it revives a pragmatism that runs from Seán Lemass straight to Micheál Martin: cooperation without precondition, benefit without constitutional strings. The question now is whether Northern ministers will become active partners or passive recipients.
A “gold standard” poll shows nationalism closing on the union. Reverse the question, keeping the format identical, and unionism’s lead jumps from 6 points to 33. The same biases drive both results. Here’s how question framing quietly sets the political weather in Northern Ireland, and a simple test to level the field.
Britain’s productivity flatlined in 2008, eight years before the referendum. Brexit added cost, and serious frictions but the real causes run deeper: weak investment, weak industrial strategy, and an employment model that grew jobs while output per hour stalled. Even Northern Ireland, the one part of the UK with a genuinely distinctive post-Brexit settlement, tells the same story.
Fine Gael has chosen Garret FitzGerald’s centenary to launch a blueprint for Irish unity. But preparation is not persuasion — and the unaligned middle who will actually decide remain unmoved by border-poll rhetoric.
My dad died two days before Christmas in 2023. On the day of his funeral rain poured from the heavens. We waded through thick mud to get to his grave. “Christ,” my brother remarked, “it’s like the f**king Somme.” In Northern Ireland, protestant burials are often small, private affairs. Only close family go and you must be invited to attend. When we arrived, we expected a small number of people. To our surprise, there was a crowd. My dad was …
Families were burned out of their homes in Belfast this week in openly racist violence. But Sara Morrison, who has lived in Belfast most of her life, argues that what happened on the Newtownards Road is the product of decades of political failure, an unfinished peace process, and communities that were never rebuilt. A vital if uncomfortable read.
A stabbing attack in north Belfast has triggered a night of serious disorder across the city and sparked protests in several UK cities. Here is a cautious summary of what has been reported so far.
A major new Policy Exchange report argues that England’s higher education system is broken beyond tinkering: too many students, too much debt, collapsing standards and a funding model that serves nobody well. For Northern Ireland, where one in five of our students cross the water to study, the consequences are closer to home than you might think.
A new survey reveals that 55 per cent of Northern Irish voters would refuse to back any party that collapses Stormont — and that support for institutional reform now cuts across the unionist-nationalist divide. But as public opinion shifts, are the politicians listening?
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?
