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.
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.
Northern Ireland’s unionist parties face a reckoning — caught between reactive politics and the collaborative vision of the Good Friday Agreement. Without a credible strategy or genuine commitment to its three strands, political unionism risks permanent decline.
Belfast Exposed gallery on Donegall Street hosted a live recording of the ARINS “My Identity” podcast on 8 May 2026, as part of the BIEN programme — an ongoing series of exhibitions and events under the title “British? Irish? Either? Neither?”. The event was chaired by Professor Colin Graham of Maynooth University, who hosts the podcast series, with the discussion featuring artists Joy Gerrard and Paul Seawright. It was sponsored by the Office of Identity and Cultural Expression (OICE) and co-presented by Belfast Exposed and the ARINS Project, with special …
David McNarry, former advisor to FM David Trimble and a former Strangford MLA for UUP/UKIP argues Unionism’s fractured political landscape may have found its wildcard — but will Nigel Farage’s Reform UK have the courage to play it? It is true that in ceding political primacy to nationalist and republicans, unionists have paid a heavy price. Cringeworthy is the woeful state of unionist representation in the NI Assembly, Belfast City Council and across local councils. And yet the divided party …
On a recent speaking engagement, Fintan O’Toole made the observation of how important it is to avoid an Irish unity process that ends up like the brexit process. This is a wish that other analysts and political reps have also highlighted. Brexit shows, they argue, the need for adequate preparation. Northern nationalism has upped its rhetoric on this in recent months – SF has been running a time to prepare campaign, and its representatives issue a request for the …
Dr Paul Gillespie directs the ‘Constitutional Futures after Brexit’ project in the School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin. Politics happens not only between Ireland, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom, but across them as well. There is a British-Irish and an Irish-British politics, along with growing relationships between state and political actors in Scotland, Wales and parts of England with their counterparts in Ireland North and South. Such relations are built into the three-stranded institutions of the …
Late last week, we heard that the SDLP were putting a motion before the Assembly to call for a border poll. Looking at the order paper for Monday, I see the following motion tabled by the Leader of the Opposition : That this Assembly welcomes the positive step forward represented by the UK-EU deal of 19 May 2025; affirms that any arrangement which reduces friction for businesses is welcomed; supports further alignment between the UK and EU including via a …
Every time I do a panel; there’s always a smart alec in the crowd. A man, usually. Without doubt he will say, “Yeah, but the British don’t care about you.” He thinks he’s the first person in the world to have this original thought. Yes, I always say, yes we know. I don’t know a single protestant in Northern Ireland that doesn’t. My grandparents knew. My great grandparents knew before them. It’s not my fault you’ve never spoken to a …
As anyone following the coverage on RTÉ will have seen, the result of Friday’s Irish election is now becoming clear with the country on course to re-elect a variant of the FF-FG coalition. As of Sunday evening, the consensus is settling on an FF-led coalition with FG, with a few independents making up the numbers. While it will be a government dominated by the same parties, the dynamic will be different – FF’s parliamentary party seems to have more older …
Dr Dan Boucher was the TUV/Reform UK candidate for Belfast South and Mid Down and is a former DUP Director of Policy and Research. We approached last week’s General Election on a very different basis to that of 12 December 2019. Back then, in Northern Ireland we enjoyed the right to stand for election to make all the laws to which we were subject. But since 1 January 2021 this right has been taken from us through the application of …
Agriculture is worth around £1.7bn to the Northern Ireland economy, 4% of total economic activity, according to figures published by the Department for the Economy. This compares to farming comprising just 1% of the UK economy – so farming is worth four times more to our economy, proportionately, than to the rest of the UK. But it is a sector that is in transition and worried. Post-Brexit trade deals agreed by the UK with major agricultural economies Australia, New Zealand …
The UK governments’ formal accession to the CPTPP trade area this weekend should be the catalyst for the Alliance Party to review its Brexit reversal policy. On Sunday, the Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenock signed a treaty which gives the UK access to the £12 trillion Indo Pacific trade bloc and a chance for the UK to expand beyond the confines of the European Union. Admittedly this is one of the very few trade-deal successes that we have witnessed …
MY social media memories today from 7 years ago are of the results of the Brexit referendum vote, 23 June 2016. The seven-year anniversary of the ‘leave’ campaign’s victory was yesterday. The vote that David Cameron said would reveal “the future we want for our children” and “goes to the heart of the kind of country we want to be”. I remember feeling rather incredulous at the time, knowing in my gut that NI/ the north of Ireland was about …
The latest in regular Post-Brexit Clinics run by Queen’s University was run on Friday morning. If you missed it, here’s a chance to catch up with both the opinion polling that the academics have been using to track sentiment and reaction to Brexit and the Protocol, and to get an update on legal action around the Protocol, and dynamic regulatory alignment. Clinic regulars Professors David Phinnemore and Katy Hayward were joined by Dr Billy Melo Araujo and Dr Lisa Whitten. …
David Allen Green has long been my British legal blogger of choice. I may not always agree with him politically, but he is often very insightful in his de-construction of the legal issues facing Britain. In a recent blogpost entitled The seven ways the matter of Brexit and the island of Ireland can be ultimately resolved, he turned his attention to the protocol, and I quote: One: the European Union and/or the Single Market ceasing to exist. This is highly …
24 hours on, the chances of success for Rishi Sunak’s mission are no clearer. Optimism however has the edge on the EU stage. As its cheerleader the FT describes it solving the Protocol quandary presages an entire reset of the UK’s future relations with the EU, quoting for instance the veteran diplomat Kim Darroch: It will make a real, positive, difference in Northern Ireland. It will stand up Sumac’s claim to be a problem solver. It will get us back …
The latest ruling from the Supreme Court should surprise no-one. The justices affirmed previous precedent and confirmed what was obvious: the Protocol was lawfully implemented. Since the ruling, there have been calls to ditch the Good Friday Agreement. Anti- Agreement unionists say the consent principle isn’t worth the paper it’s written on because it didn’t stop the Protocol If the Agreement should go because it’s useless, what does that say about the Act of Union? In its ruling, the Supreme …
Recent discussions about the Protocol in Northern Ireland have focused on the problems it poses for the DUP. But from an EU perspective it seeks to solve a far larger problem for the EU as a whole. Much of the analysis of Brexit has been in terms of it being an English nationalist project. What has been missed is the extent to which it is also a political libertarian project. Much of the driving force behind Brexiteer ideology has been …
Today is the third anniversary of the UK’s liberation from under the jackboot of the EU technocracy. Since Brexit, the uplands have never been sunnier, or maybe not… Those party poopers at the IMF decided to rain on the parade by pointing out that even Russia seems to be doing better than the UK. According to the IMF, the UK economy is expected to contract by 0.5% while the Russian economy is expected to grow by 1%. “Even Russia’s economy …
