Government – Page 4 – Slugger O'Toole

Removing statues is a revolutionary gesture. Is that what’s needed?

Brian Walker on June 9, 2020, 4:52 pm

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Queen Victoria being removed from the front of the Dail Fergus on Monday nailed it. In the current atmosphere the statue of Oliver Cromwell speaks for itself. Perched in front of Westminster Hall the Victorians who erected it were celebrating the victory of Parliament over the royal tyrant Charles 1. But even leaving aside the massacres of Drogheda and Wexford, this distorts Cromwell’s record. He sent the troops in to expel Parliament not once but twice and instead ruled …

Between the constraints of collapsing lockdown and the exhilaration of anti- racist protest, which would you choose?

Brian Walker on June 7, 2020, 8:30 pm

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BLM. Woe betide you if you need the acronym explained. The tide of Black Lives Matter protest has swept across the Atlantic and across the world, following in the wake of Covid 19. Point out the risk of mass infection caused by close encounter at demonstrations and you risk being called a closet racist by some. Politicians are gambling that there won’t be a second spike despite clear warnings from the north of England. For so many young people champing …

From Northern Ireland to the US, from 1968 to today, the camera is a powerful catalyst for change

Brian Walker on June 5, 2020, 6:31 pm

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The horrific image of policemen in Minneapolis caught in the act of slowly choking George Floyd to death has prompted the thought : how different would have been the course of the Troubles if they’d been waged under the eyes of 24/7 live news coverage and video cameras with sound on mobile phones? Would a whole race of citizen journalists, citizen terrorists and citizen security forces have been created all videoing each other like crazy? Might violence amounting to …

Stormont has just performed better than Westminster. Signs of a new era dawning for the Northern Ireland Assembly

Brian Walker on June 3, 2020, 12:10 am

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Social distance voting at Westminster. Just as Westminster makes an ass of itself over voting against digital voting, Stormont enters a more hopeful new era. It’s complicated, even tortuous, but that’s a positive virtue compared to the old familiar choice between deadlock and carve up. Correction I earlier reported the voting wrongly for lack of information. It was even more complicated than I supposed. I’m indebted to Sam McBride of the Newsletter for explaining how the DUP and Sinn Fein …

Our own populism holds us back in Northern Ireland

Gareth Brown on June 1, 2020, 5:14 pm

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For a part of the world that relies so heavily on compromise to literally allow public administration to function, we don’t do nuance very well. You need only look at the public outcry to the mere suggestion that we may have to pay for our own water back when the New Decade, New Approach deal was agreed as the latest evidence of our own self-defeating populism. The uncomfortable, and unpopular, truth is that this mindset holds us back in Northern …

Is authority split between the UK government and devolved “nations” helping or hindering the management of the pandemic?

Brian Walker on June 1, 2020, 12:00 pm

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Has the management of the pandemic further weakened the Union or behind the political noise, proved that Westminster and the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are essentially working well together? No doubt an only partly suppressed competition to win credit with the voters at the end of the day is being waged. But cooperation is to an extent made more difficult because the division of responsibilities isn’t always clear. The devolved governments run for example health and education …

Theresa Villiers U- turn! Arch Brexiteer opposes free trade deal with US as ” threat to the Union”

Brian Walker on May 25, 2020, 12:28 pm

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An intriguing little Brexit story. At a post- referendum conference in 2016 I watched flinching as Ireland’s most eminent public servant Peter Sutherland, former Attorney General, former EU commissioner, first head of the World Trade Organisation, chairman of BP etc.etc ( now sadly dead), tore into the UK’s decision to leave the EU as insane, disastrous etc., giving chapter and verse. As he finished he admitted with a grin he’d been ranting. Batting for Britain was former NI secretary Theresa …

Will the promise of light touch, low regulation for the border in the Irish Sea at our ports be fulfilled?

Brian Walker on May 21, 2020, 8:35 am

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Larne Harbour If we have to have a border in the Irish Sea it would be great to keep it cheap and simple. That’s the powerful appeal of the British “Attitude to the Northern Ireland Protocol” available here in full. It contrasts with all the complex thicket of process in the EU version supported by a chorus of Europhiles. After all the UK government should know; they will implement it not the EU. It isn’t at all clear how the …

Differences over Covid management within the UK shouldn’t be exaggerated but they are provoking a rethink of how the UK is governed

Brian Walker on May 19, 2020, 1:01 am

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Schadenfreude at the state of the United Kingdom is a familiar default sentiment among republicans who comment in Slugger. They believe that mishandling of Brexit and now Covid is evidence of terminal decline. The notion is not limited to those predisposed against the UK . It crosses the community. What encourages the republican- minded depresses unionist Cassandras like Alex Kane. The most eloquent is the Guardian columnist Martin Kettle. To the surprise of many of those watching, and perhaps even …

Behind the alarmist noises, the UK and the EU have the basis of a deal. It will be criminal if they fail

Brian Walker on May 16, 2020, 10:41 am

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David Frost and Michel Barnier standing together ( just about) Lurking not far behind Covid is the self inflicted crisis over the next stage of Brexit. To many including me, the prospect of a border at the Irish Sea is as revolting as a physical border on the island of Ireland. It’s no consolation that there’s a disconnect between the political rhetoric and what’s actually happening on the ground. The government has privately conceded there will be post-Brexit checks on …

Victory for the de Souzas and for Irish citizens’ immigration rights: a battle that should never have needed to be fought

Brian Walker on May 15, 2020, 11:29 am

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Yet another example of ignorance of Northern Ireland affairs in different parts of the UK government. Derry born Emma de Souza has won her three year battle to allow her American husband Jake to live with her, an Irish citizen in Northern Ireland, without having to renounce her birthright as a British citizen which she doesn’t want to exercise. She wants to bring him in under EU therefore Irish not UK immigration laws. Her victory is a triumph of principle …

The Governor of the Bank of England and Tory back benchers join Boris Johnson to reject the A-word – Austerity

Brian Walker on May 14, 2020, 10:49 am

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Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England Because of Covid 19,“ the UK is facing a mega recession” warns the Institute of Fiscal Studies. It’s hardly a surprise to learn more every day about the dire state of yet another part of the economy. GDP is forecast to slump by 25-30 per cent this quarter, and millions of jobs could be destroyed – with no guarantees about the recovery. Official figures yesterday showed a 5.8 per cent fall in …

There is more than one vision of a new Ireland

Brian Walker on May 12, 2020, 12:31 pm

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I’ve yet to read Paul Gosling’s book with the vaultingly ambitious yet carefully ambiguous title “A New Ireland: a new Union, a New Society.” Judging from the discussion and its antecedents from the Holywell Trust, it makes an important contribution to enriching the debate on the future of the island. But the logic of ideas seldom reproduces easily in politics. Political will is something else entirely. Broadly there are two contrasting approaches to the future: to follow the logic of …

Another case of perverse British exceptionalism rumbled late?

Brian Walker on May 8, 2020, 2:22 pm

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Peter Donaghy vindicated! An FT exclusive picked up by the Guardian.. The government has left open the prospect of ditching its own contact-tracing app in favour of the “decentralised” model favoured by Apple and Google after it was revealed that a feasibility study into such a change is under way. After repeated warnings that the UK will be an outlier if it insists on using its own centralised app rather than relying on Google and Apple’s technology, rights groups and MPs said …

The stand off over the Ireland/NI protocol is a model of cooperation compared to Covid planning

Brian Walker on May 7, 2020, 11:35 am

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A few days ago, naively perhaps, I wondered why north and south weren’t cooperating actively over Covid 19, especially when a memo of understanding had been signed between the two public health authorities at the end of March . After all ” North –South” is one of those pillars of the GFA that are almost a religion albeit a neglected one. Surely Covid created ideal circumstances for holding a big revival. Across the water, one of the pieties of the …

What’s in an app?

Brian Walker on May 4, 2020, 4:48 pm

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In relation to the cross-border use of the app, Mr Harris said inter-operability between EU member states and use of the app across the Border “presents specific challenges which have yet to be addressed”. “The specific challenge of North-South travel in Ireland and across the Irish Sea has been highlighted in EU meetings convened to discuss eHealth and the app.” There in a nutshell is a problem of the moment. How big a problem for the island is the choice …

Pressure for a Troubles amnesty continues to mount.

Brian Walker on May 2, 2020, 11:28 am

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Denis Bradley, the co-author of the original report on Dealing with the Past thirteen years ago which has never been improved on, has come up with an extraordinary argument for what reads like one step away from an amnesty for the Troubles. In this he joins the local academics who for years had been arguing that assessment of the evidence against both the security forces and paramilitaries should be independent from the usual institutions of the state if it was …

Boris Johnson’s perversity on the Brexit cliff edge reminds me of the Free State’s rejection of all things British

Brian Walker on April 30, 2020, 9:05 pm

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Warrenpoint Harbour The UK’s stubbornly negative approach to future relations within the EU reminds me of the newborn Free State’s attitude to Britain after the trauma of independence. They can’t wait to be rid of even the symbols as well as the substance of the former power even to the extent of trying to deny the facts of mutual interdependence particularly over the economy. Granted there are vital differences. No blood has been spilled over Brexit and… I was going …

Emma De Souza: a solution?

Sarah Creighton on April 29, 2020, 9:54 am

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As we drift through another week in lockdown, it’s hard to believe that there’s anything else to discuss apart from Coronavirus. Thankfully, Northern Ireland’s unique brand of identity politics stops for no pandemic. Cast your mind back to last year and the case of Emma De Souza. I wrote about it here. Mrs De Souza’s case concerns Article 1(vi) of the British-Irish Agreement. That section states that the two governments recognise the right of: ‘…..the people of Northern Ireland to …

Good time to bring merit in government back into electoral politics?

Ian Clarke on April 27, 2020, 1:02 pm

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As we watch how our various ministers deal with the first genuine crisis of their careers, it seems like a good time to see if the management and emergence from Covid-19 gives us any ideas on how we can improve our overall governance in Northern Ireland. Paul Gosling uploaded an interesting article earlier this week in which he raised certain ways in which our system of devolved government could be reformed in the general interest. Paul’s focus was largely on …