Politics – Page 5 – Slugger O'Toole

Why “winning the internet” is failing to win the argument on a united Ireland…

Mick Fealty on October 10, 2025, 10:00 am

| Readers 2385

blue card on top of opened book

Social media is (to quote Michelle Gildernew on Northern Ireland) a sh!thole. That nasty stuff is posted there about the presidential candidates is no surprise. It’s like rugby where the referee is tied and bound and left in the changing rooms. People focus on the brutality it helps generate from time to time (the intimidatory protests outside Naomi Long’s house, for example) but it also makes us stupider as a society. It is its basis in large language models (LLMs) …

SDLP Conference Report – seeking to build something new that values hopes over fears #SDLP25

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 4, 2025, 5:16 pm

| Readers 1834

Clare Hanna surrounded by family and political colleages at the conclusion of her speech at the October 2025 conference. The conference stage backdrop is a vivid red colour.

Last year’s conference witnessed the baton of leadership being passed from Colum Eastwood to Claire Hanna. A year later, the new leader was benefitting from a reinvigorated internal party machine. Hanna was less reticent and more forthright in discussing her vision for Irish unity, and was supported by Assembly colleagues who felt confident to celebrate their work in Opposition up on the hill. Executive parties have to make a show of highlighting delivery in their conference panels and speeches, sometimes …

Whatever happened to Civic Nationalism?

Terry Wright on September 18, 2025, 9:22 am

| Readers 1737

the words future is creative painted on a wall

In 2018, a group of civic nationalists penned a public letter urging Taoiseach of the day, Leo Varadkar TD, to protect the rights of Irish citizens in Northern Ireland. The letter voiced concern at the ongoing political crisis in Northern Ireland saying that it had come about because of a failure to: “both implement and defend the Good Friday and St Andrew’s agreements” the result being a denial and refusal of “equality, rights and respect towards the section of the …

Stop Taking Us for Fools – Calling Out the Internal Market Guarantee

Soapbox on September 12, 2025, 1:12 pm

| Readers 3705

black and white boat on blue sea during daytime

Jim Allister is leader of the TUV and MP for North Antim. A KC he has previously represented North Antrim in the Northern Ireland Assembly and Northern Ireland in the European Parliament. He outlines the internal sea border problem. On Wednesday I led a debate in Parliament on the key ‘Safeguarding the Union’ provision that at least 80% of freight travelling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland must move in the UK Internal Market System, ahead of an anticipated report …

Gazing into the smallest Irish presidential election field in a generation?

Mick Fealty on September 8, 2025, 1:30 pm

| Readers 2544

silhouette photography of person

I’ve resisted writing about the Irish presidential election throughout the silly season. Now with just two and a half weeks left until nominations close we are finally getting down to the pointy end of the competition. Only Sinn Féin has yet to reveal its hand. The withdrawal of Fine Gael’s Mairead McGuinness for health reasons both screwed up the party’s careful preparations (in contrast with Fianna Fail’s seeming lack of the same) and my own betting strategy (I got a …

Getting Derry the investment it needs will take an all-Northern Ireland mindset…

Mick Fealty on August 19, 2025, 11:36 am

| Readers 2873

man standing beside another sitting man using computer

On Nolan on Friday we discussed Colum Eastwood’s claim that as an MP he often found it easier to get things done when Stormont was down than when it was up. He wasn’t advocating for abolition, but merely stating there’s a serious case to answer. His particular beef was the way the northwest and Derry in particular has been neglected in spite of the fact that city has had representation right at the top of the Stormont tree. Martin McGuinness …

Taoiseach Micheál Martin delivering the Seamus Mallon ‘Shared Home Place’ Lecture

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 22, 2025, 11:45 pm

| Readers 1188

Taoiseach Micheál Martin delivered the annual Seamus Mallon ‘Shared Home Place’ Lecture in the Navan Centre & Fort in Armagh this evening. You can watch back the full event which was chaired by Hume Foundation vice-chair Dawn Purvis. Allen McAdam, Dr Kate Clifford and Deirdriú McQuaid joined the Q&A after the lecture. Some snippets from the Taoiseach’s speech: This year, I also announced a new dimension to the Shared Island Initiative that is directly inspired by Seamus Mallon – the …

Why painting the Orange only in the darkest colours will rebound on nationalism…

Mick Fealty on July 22, 2025, 7:00 am

| Readers 7696

shallow focus photo of assorted paint brush lot

I wonder what our media would report during silly season if it were not for the Orange celebrations leading up to and following the 12th July. Sammy Morrison of the TUV calls it Twelfth Derangement Syndrome (does TDS sound a wee bit familiar?). In the US, the liberal media’s earnings soared as they daily expressed shocked outrage at the latest utterances of Donald Trump firstly on Twitter, and latterly on his own platform, the ironically named Truth Social. Their overreaction …

Na leoin Éireannacha (The Irish Lions) to win by 20

ItwasSammyMcNally on July 18, 2025, 9:57 am

| Readers 1891

brown tabby cat on white textile

As a reluctant and begrudging, Lions fan, I felt my reluctance and begrudgery giving way when 15 Irish players were included in the original Lions squad of 38. That number is now up to 17 with the addition of two more Irish players, Tom Clarkson & Jamie Osborne. (For evidence of that begrudgery see here). Thursday’s team announcement saw a record 8 Irish Players (a majority) starting in the 1st test on Saturday morning. Kick off is at 11 o clock …

“We’re between narratives, which means denial in the early stages is because of a desire to preserve last shreds of old imploding monoculture’

Mick Fealty on July 2, 2025, 10:59 am

| Readers 3043

brown sand under white sky during daytime

Reconciliation, rekənˌsɪliˈeɪʃən: “the process of making two people or groups of people friendly again after they have argued seriously or fought and kept apart from each other, or a situation in which this happens.” -Cambridge Dictionary Last week the word reconciliation got a bad wrap in some quarters. Rory Carroll highlights one comment, from an old mucker of mine, Kevin Rooney, who found it to be a villainous roadblock on the road [not another A5? – Ed] to a united Ireland: …

Introducing a Stormont election projection tool…

Soapbox on June 30, 2025, 10:14 am

| Readers 3157

closeup photography of swarm of jellyfish

Originally from Fermanagh, Eoghan Kelly is a postdoc on University of Edinburgh’s Scottish Election Study and has lectured in Irish politics at Queen’s. Here he introduces a new election projection site for Northern Ireland.. Tools like Electoral Calculus allow anyone with an interest in Westminster elections to convert national polls into seat projections. But no such tool existed for Northern Ireland Assembly elections. The subtleties of STV and a general lack of interest from the GB political class meant we …

‘What is the peace?’ Rethinking Northern Irish photography from the Troubles and beyond

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on June 26, 2025, 10:53 pm

| Readers 1804

The latest series of talks at the Photo Museum Ireland featured an insightful lecture by Colin Graham, a professor of English and an accomplished author. The evening’s discussion centred around the intricate subject of Northern Irish photography, with a particular focus on its evolution from conflict to peace and the various artistic interpretations within that spectrum. Colin Graham’s background is rooted in literature and cultural studies, which provided a unique lens through which he examined Northern Irish photography. He noted, “I moved back to Belfast …

Same anthem. Same flag. Reconciliation, not a priority. Is this the ‘great generational cause’?

Terry Wright on June 26, 2025, 9:14 am

| Readers 4492

A bronze sculpture depicts a man hugging a child.

Former Taoiseach and TD, Dr Leo Varadkar is no stranger to provocative politics when it comes to Northern Ireland. Continuing, of late, with the agenda he platformed during an event at the SSE arena last year he reveals, yet again, limited understanding of the residual values and preferences within the party political and non-politically aligned Remain UK constituency, and beyond. Unlike Michéal Martin, TD and current Taoiseach, he doesn’t get nuance and complexity. Instead, he opts for the binary and …

A5 debacle: “likely to take years rather than months to assemble the evidence to support the scheme in anything like its current form…”

Mick Fealty on June 25, 2025, 5:48 pm

| Readers 2406

gray concrete road near trees and houses during daytime

Clowntown. An ugly undercurrent surrounding this week’s court case which struck down the DoFI plans for the A5 road, was a sense amongst some of the road’s supporters that this was a Catholic v Protestant farmer’s thing. Nah, it was incompetence. There’s been no unionist involvement in this project since Danny Kennedy’s tenure between 2011 and 2015. Since then (and before, when Conor Murphy took the hot seat) Infrastructure has been a nationalist gig. One that doesn’t speak well for …

Questions for Republicans over Kingsmill: Is “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” an adequate response?

ItwasSammyMcNally on June 24, 2025, 1:03 pm

| Readers 4679

gray and brown stones on gray ground

When he heard about the massacre, Patrick Casey, a member of the IRA in South Armagh said “I remember my feeling was one of horror when I heard the details. Nothing could justify this holocaust of unfortunate Protestants.” Casey was speaking about the shooting dead of 6 Protestants by the IRA in Altnaveigh. That was in 1922. Altnaveigh is about 6 miles from Kingsmill, where 10 Protestants were shot dead by the IRA – 54 years later. As Danny Morrison (Director of …

Are we nearly there?

Paul Gosling on June 23, 2025, 2:55 pm

| Readers 2970

When our society discusses Irish unity – as it increasingly does – we need to focus more on the realities of what a united Ireland will be. At present, too much conversation considers the question of identity and too little on how this new country will function, what it will feel like, how it will integrate those who do not want to belong and how we will get there. This is the purpose of my new book, ‘A New Ireland …

Peace photography: supporting conflict transformation

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on June 17, 2025, 2:23 pm

| Readers 307

At an online session organised by Dr Tiffany Fairey, a senior research fellow at King’s College London, participants gathered to explore the intersection of photography and peace. The event brought together a range of experts and practitioners to discuss how photography can foster cultures of peace in different contexts. The panel was chaired by Dr Fairey, who leads a research project called Imaging Peace — a multi-year, multi-country study of peace photography. She framed the session with a probing question: “What is …

The vital role of archives for reconciliation

Allan LEONARD (Mr Ulster) on June 16, 2025, 9:17 am

| Readers 625

Archives serve as repositories of our collective memory, housing documents, artefacts, and other historical materials that help societies understand their past. In a recent panel discussion, experts from various fields came together to discuss the significance of archives in reconciliation processes, including how community voices, especially those of victims and marginalised groups, are represented in these records. The participants included Ruth Murray, Eliza McKee, Kate Manning, Sam McBride, Caoili O’Doherty, and Nicholas Cole. The event was at Hillsborough Castle, hosted …

If you think America’s political travails don’t also affect us, think again?

Mick Fealty on June 13, 2025, 11:20 am

| Readers 974

hamster, cage, faces

“Confused? You won’t be, after this week’s episode of … Soap.” – Opening lines from the 1980s comedy series, Soap Years ago I heard a journalist friend tell an audience in London how political journalism was like a cappuccino, all froth and excitement, but signifying little of substance, whereas financial journalism was more espresso, dark, bitter and to the point. Watching America turn itself inside out over the soap opera that is the office of the 45th President of the …

The banality of paramilitaries as the dumb and dangerous riot in Ballymena.

Louise Taylor on June 12, 2025, 11:20 am

| Readers 4875

close-up photography of person lifting hands

In Northern Ireland I believe we are normalising and becoming worryingly desensitised to the insidious and persistent existence of paramilitaries on our streets, in our communities and in our cities. The political theorist Hannah Ardent wrote about the banality of evil and how horrific acts were neither radical nor charged with meaning and were often done to control people and many of the acts associated were banal and presented as such. This term is useful when looking at paramilitaries and their actions in …