From Drumcree Hill to today’s Assembly, the denial of Portadown Orangemen’s right to walk a public road is unchanged. A veteran protester argues that only a single, unified unionist party can unseat Michelle O’Neill, and calls on Gavin, Jon and Jim to make it happen at the ballot box.
Nationalism risks its own form of “dummymander”: reading the 2021 census as a countdown to unity, much as Texas Republicans redrew their maps on demographic assumptions and lost. The Taoiseach’s new body offers a stronger path, preparing for several futures and engaging every tradition, so that consent is earned rather than assumed.
Carla Lockhart borrows from Paisley and Thatcher, but she isn’t speaking from strength. Pulling the deputy First Minister to remove Michelle O’Neill would freeze budgets at 95%, lose Barnett money from today’s UK Budget, and leave the DUP carrying the blame for a gesture voters would reverse in May.
For a generation, unionist parties competed on who looked toughest. The Garvaghy Road standoff suggests that has changed. Jon Burrows has made restraint look like strength, and the DUP now faces pressure from both sides. A game-theory look at how the three unionist parties responded.
Gavin Robinson’s call for unionist electoral co-operation looks back to a past that no longer exists. After the muted response to Drumcree, a growing pro-union constituency wants delivery, consensus and a working Good Friday Agreement rather than “circle the wagons” pacts. This piece asks why the UUP would tie itself to the DUP and TUV.
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 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.
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 …
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?
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.
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 …
As calls for Unionist unity and electoral pacts resurface ahead of the 2026 elections, Terry argues that political unionism is trapped in a “mental bloc.” The movement is failing to engage a new generation of pro-union voters who value cultural hybridity over old denominational structures. Is unionist re-alignment a path to renewal, or merely the final throes of a tired ritual?
Before the Covid pandemic forced us to start paying with our cards or phones, we had to fill our pockets with shiny little bits of metal called coins. If you still possess any coins, you will find that most have the late Queen Elizabeth II embossed on one side and beside her name you might see the letters FD or FID. This comes from the Latin title Fidei Defensor – Defender of the Faith, an honorary title bestowed on King Henry …
The DUP went back to the La Mon Hotel for the first time in nearly a decade. Several hundred delegates gathered as the party marks 18 months back in government and is gearing up for the 2027 Assembly and Local Government Elections. The party ministers spent time firing shots at Sinn Fein and the TUV, with Upper Bann MLA, Jonathan Buckley played the role of delivering the message to the base with a speech focusing on immigration. Leaders speech bu …
Gavin Robinson took to the stage in his first speech as DUP leader. Addressing around 300 delegates, he attempted to reset a party that had been battered over the past three years. With devolution restored and a run of elections now behind the party, Robinson has a huge task ahead. How do you restore a once-dominant party to its former strength? One clear message from the conference is that the DUP is in a rebuilding phase. Despite the success of …
Elections are won by the party (or coalition of parties) which can attract the most support and agree a common programme. This applies whether you have a two-party state or a multi-party state. Sinn Fein have faced this in the Dail where they have been the equal-largest party, but Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would rather set aside their historic differences and work together than form a coalition with Sinn Fein. In US politics, where the bell curve of left …
Jeffrey Donaldson has been getting a bad press for what seems like his eternal dithering over devolution and failure to move the process forward. It is said that the party officers are split and that he can’t carry his Executive with him. Even if he does succeed in persuading a narrow majority to support his deal there is a risk of a hugely damaging party split with the anti-Protocol or Windsor Framework faction defecting to the TUV or some other …
Over the course of 2023 I had 4 pieces published by Slugger on the challenges facing Sir Jeffrey Donaldson in getting his party back into government in Stormont. To recap, my line on all 3 was that he needed to face down the old Paisleyites in the DUP by claiming victory from his negotiations with HMG and using that claimed victory to lead a realignment of mainstream unionism into something currently lapsed voters can embrace. I seriously hope this is …
My Dad died two days before Christmas. I was on my way up to see him when I got a missed call and a text from my brother telling me he’d passed away. He had pancreatic cancer. The time between diagnosis and death is often short. Before you’ve had time to wrap your head around the fact that your loved one is ill, they are gone. The shock of the loss is as sharp and painful as the grief. How …
This is the fourth piece I’ve submitted to Slugger in 2023 on the challenges facing Sir Jeffrey Donaldson in getting his party back into government in Stormont. The essence of the previous 3 was that Jeffrey needed to face down the old (literally and figuratively) Paisleyite rump of his party by claiming victory from his negotiations with HMG and using that claimed victory to lead a realignment of mainstream unionism into something currently lapsed voters can embrace. It certainly hasn’t …
