Conall McDevitt’s resignation from the assembly this week has provoked some debate about the future direction of the SDLP. With this in mind, I thought I would take this issue head on and ask the crucial question do the SDLP even have a future? When you take a look at the figures of every assembly election since 1998, you can sum up the SDLP’s fortunes in one word; decline. In 1998, the party took more first preference votes than any …
I don’t have anything particular to note about this interview other than, it’s been a very long time since the SDLP leader gave an interview to anyone. And it shows. There’s not a lot he can do about the bull in the china shop thing, but just by doing it and getting something of a pro victims party line out he may have helped to steady some nerves both inside and outside the chamber today. Jude Collins thinks (and he …
I’d be the first to point out that FitzJamesHorse is blogger, and therefore on some level not real. He’s a nice to meet, if a little prickly in his online persona. But I was struck by this post from a few days ago by the bald statement it contains… Thats the thing. The Culture Wars in the USA have been won by the Civil Rights movement and lost by the right wing racists. Likewise…as last years Olympics showed British multiculturalism …
If you have not read it yet, check out Brian Walker’s analysis last night on how Stormont’s incumbents are failing the populations of Northern Ireland by leaving the real and contentious business of politics to a small band of hyperactive terror merchants. The leader of Fianna Fail, Micheal Martin has a few similarly hard truths to deliver this morning’s Belfast Telegraph: The problem as I see it is this – if politics is not demonstrably and tangibly about making people’s …
Two blogs well worth reading side by side. First Jude Collins with a thoughtful piece asking whether the trajectory of current Republican thinking is actually yielding significant political capital for nationalism. In particular he makes the essentially moral point that: Were the northern economy prospering, were the material conditions of all the citizens in the north to be comfortable and getting better, it would still be a sad reflection on our immaturity that we depend on an annual hand-out from …
The Irish Times series on Northern Ireland has given an refreshing focus to the viewpoints of southern nationalists. Today’s op ed by Hugo MacNeill is a good example of a line we’ve heard before, not least from former taoiseach, Brian Cowen: The ultimate destination of any political project is a matter of time working itself out. Therefore the destination is not the thing to be talking about. That will be for other people to decide in another time maybe. The …
Comrade Stalin in the comments under Alan’s makes a reasonable point about the SDLP’s belated talk of opposition, given that party’s rather rigid come-what-may espousal of a settlement that crowds out any oppositionist voice. Yet this is what happens the democratic world over when parties change their leadership. The change of personnel gives them latitude to change direction. For my part its inclusion in Kelly’s speech was an smart move on their part: One, it’s flying a kite, not policy. …
Micheál Martin’s interview with Mark Carruthers on The View last night is interesting viewing. Not least at the point (about here) where Carruthers mentions Gerry Adams’ dismissal of the Fianna Fail’s interventions as being driven by a concern for politics in the south. I’ve no doubt that the general thrust of Adams statement is correct. As argued here before, that’s what competitors do do. But the idea that FF and SF are neck and neck in the Republic only really …
I was struck by Niall O’Dowd’s passionate assay of the Rory McIlroy choses to be British affair, not least where he rather honestly relates that …the Northern Ireland flag, flown by a Protestant like Graeme McDowell, will never bother me in the slightest, flown by a Catholic like Rory, however, will never seem quite right to me. I remember being best man at friend’s wedding in the mid 80s. It was a mixed marriage and the plan was to marry …
Good interview in the Irish Post which pushes Martin McGuinness a little harder than we’ve become accustomed to in recent years within the Irish MSM. I was particularly interested in this section, because it has some pragmatic echoes of Bertie’s analysis just before he left office. Yet it also asks some real questions about the foreign policy implications of the slow economic drift between Britain (and Northern Ireland) and Europe (and the Republic) for anyone wanting to put the two …
It annoyed me years ago when I walked into Elvery’s on Dawson Street to find they stocked plenty Leinster and Munster tops but no Ulster ones. Then again, you only stock what there’s a demand for, and for years Ulster was the poor relation in Irish rugby. [Image from BigStock] So much so that as rugby has become genuinely and broadly popular in Northern Ireland, many Northern Irish nationalists have taken to supporting provincial winners from other parts of the …
Alex Kane has a very spirited piece on Eamonn’s site this evening. Let’s just say he’s rather unimpressed with nationalism’s idea of outreach on the subject of politically unifying the two parts of an island sundered with partition. His core challenge to the lack of thinking within nationalism is here: We are not talking about the reunification of East and West Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. This would involve the coming together of two countries on the …
This is not a trick question. It’s really an idea floated by Wendy Austin on Twitter yesterday. And the ‘rule’ implied in the title will be enforced. So unionists need not apply for inclusion in this thread (we’ll have another one exclusively for you tomorrow). Neither is it intended to separate serious minded nationalists from a treasured ambition. You might helpfully conceive of more in the way of “what would I like to take into a United Ireland with me”? …
So, Gerry Adams has revealed the goals that will unify the island of Ireland. Can’t really argue with any of them, but all of them depend on petitioning the agency of others. Journal.ie has framed an article around a party presser on the subject: 1 To popularise re-unification as viable, achievable and in the best interests of all and to build consensus for this; 2 To encourage all non-unionist political parties and sections of civic society to become persuaders and …
Interesting piece by Brian Feeney in today’s Irish News, pointing out that a recently leaked committee report talks about beefing up the Lords, redding out the poor attenders (of which there are more than a few Unionist reps) and making all new seats amenable to re-election (albeit for a fifteen year period)… He suggests that if Sinn Fein jumps abstain towards abstention, it is opening up new, winnable ground for nationalism’s zombie party (“life after political death”) in an all …
Okay, I’m deliberately turning this one on its head, partly because the question raised in Ian Parsley’s post poses is more interesting that way. So for me, here’s the payload in Ian’s post: The DUP has proven masterful at taking fairly narrow policy positions and giving them broad appeal; it seems to seek out certain chunks of the electorate and prioritise one particular set of policies to them. The UUP and SDLP, on the other hand, try to sell their …
I recall suggesting to a fairly senior member of the SDLP not 18 months ago that the party had insufficient political capital to squander it on a ‘Fianna Fail versus Irish Labour’ squabble. It was a counsel that, along with much else publicly expounded from this blog, apparently fell on deaf ears. With which southern party do you want alignment may be a great parlour-game, but for a party in the SDLP’s perilous position, it is the wrong question (at …
No surprise to most long term readers but it seems that those looking towards sectarian divide to re-unite the island of Ireland might be looking in the wrong direction: The (Life and Times) survey, which was conducted between October and December last year, found just 33% of Catholics wanted Irish unity on the long term. More than half of Catholics said they would prefer to stay in the UK, a view shared by 90% of Protestants. I can’t access the …
The row over Mary McArdle shows no sign of abating yet and the one over Sean McGlinchey the new mayor of Limavady seems to be gearing up. There are of course a variety of other Sinn Fein members with significant terrorist pasts: the News Letter produced a list of these individuals last week. Various explanations have been proffered: rewards for “old soldiers” and reassuring the hard line republican base seem to be amongst the most convincing; winding up unionists is …
This is a version of the article of mine that appears in the Political Review supplement of today’s Belfast News Letter. It examines the call for nationalist unity from Declan O’Loan and asks: cui bono. It concludes that nationalism’s best chance for unification may be to remain free to develop separate and competing visions for unification.
