The Taoiseach’s new constitutional research body will examine three futures for the island: a unitary state, a devolved united Ireland and the status quo. Rather than staking everything on a border poll that may never come, it builds an evidence base, and a set of tools for future taoisigh, that will be useful whatever happens.
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.
The debate about Stormont’s future is asking the wrong question. The real issue is whether nationalism has the honesty to tell a younger generation what constitutional change actually requires — and the institutional competence to prove it can govern in the meantime.
While Northern Republicanism remains preoccupied with the “semiotics” of defiance and historical score-settling, the dream of a 32-county state is stalling and the divergences between North and South are widening. If the Good Friday Agreement was meant to be a bridge, why has it been turned into a trench? Mick argues it’s time to trade 19th-century tactics for 21st-century statecraft.
Referendums are now established as part of the UK’s political landscape. They are widely seen as necessary before some fundamental constitutional changes are made. Politicians will continue from time to time to find it useful to manage conflicts by proposing to put certain decisions to the people. Yet, despite their importance, there has been little concerted thinking recently about how referendums should be conducted. Two inquiries conducted in the 1990s – by the Nairne Commission and the Committee on Standards …
Slugger O’Toole is undoubtedly the most successful blog site and the ultimate soapbox for debate in Northern Ireland at the moment: a Speaker’s Corner in downtown Cyberville for New-Age ranters. Not too sure if Slugger would let the likes of me have a blog on this site or not? If I could get on there I would have to be very careful what I said as Slugger’s followers love to challenge and even ridicule: especially anything that might be from a …
