Parties – Page 21 – Slugger O'Toole

“Provisional IRA members believe the Provisional Army Council oversees both PIRA and Sinn Féin with an overarching strategy.”

Pete Baker on October 20, 2015, 2:48 pm

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The Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Theresa Villiers, has published the assessment of “the structure, role and purpose of paramilitary groups focusing on those which declared ceasefires in order to support and facilitate the political process”. Theresa Villiers’ statement to Parliament is here. The letter to the Secretary of State [pdf file] from the independent reviewers confirming the completion of their assessment is also available. We are satisfied that: i) MI5 and PSNI have engaged fully with us, consistent with their duties and constraints: …

NI Commissioner for Public Appointments: “We just do not have diverse representation on our public boards.”

Pete Baker on October 19, 2015, 4:39 pm

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The new Commissioner for Public Appointments in Northern Ireland, Judena Leslie, made her first media appearance on BBC NI’s The View last week. And she began where her predecessor left off, criticising the lack of diversity in those public appointments. From the BBC report Northern Ireland has about 1,400 public appointments, ranging from unpaid boards of further education colleges to many high profile paid positions. Women, ethnic minorities and people with a disability are all under-represented on public bodies. Thirty-three …

Stormont deal now looking likely

Brian Walker on October 12, 2015, 10:27 am

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Very gradually, the language surrounding the political talks is changing from negative to cautiously constructive, as Noel McAdam’s report shows .. In the strongest indication the party could return to the Executive, Mrs Foster has said the DUP will respond “positively” to positive developments during the inter-party talks on IRA activity and welfare reform. There may be sticking points over dealing with the past but these are not political deal breakers. Newton Emerson in the Irish News and at length …

Sinn Féin’s Sandra McLellan Standing Down in East Cork

Pete Baker on October 11, 2015, 1:51 pm

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When Sandra McLellan’s reported local party ally, Cllr June Murphy, resigned from Sinn Féin in September, citing her “increasingly negative experience” in the party, over that little local difficulty in East Cork, I wondered whether the party would continue to back their East Cork TD. Facing a new re-selection contest in the constituency, the party’s sitting TD has announced that she is withdrawing from the fray. From the RTÉ report Sinn Féin has confirmed that the party’s TD Sandra McLellan has decided not to contest …

On the political future, the answers are available and lie mainly with ourselves

Brian Walker on October 3, 2015, 1:50 pm

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Yelps of alarm are appearing in the papers as the political talks are poised to enter a third week without signs of resolution. Depression seems to be the order the day. Theresa Villiers reports a big gap remaining between the parties . Jim Downey in the Indo depicts a chronic low intensity crisis which the Republic has ignored and over which it has little leverage More or less quiet”? If you look closely, you can see that the place isn’t …

Reflections on the SDLP, prompted by Seamus Mallon

Brian Walker on October 2, 2015, 6:01 pm

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Seamus Mallon, estimable figure that he still is, has left it a bit late to declare that a “fundamental mistake” was made to allow Sinn Féin into government without decommissioning. His point is not new but I don’t remember him saying it at the time. As Seamus’s successor as DFM Mark Durkan retails it: “Tony Blair at that time – we reminded him of this at Weston Park – said, ‘Yeah, you guys, your problem is you don’t have guns.” …

#SluggerReport – We have to talk about the SDLP…

Mick Fealty on October 2, 2015, 2:43 pm

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DROPPING THE PILOT? The SDLP remains alive. That’s pretty much its greatest achievement in the post Belfast Agreement era. Either leadership contender would face an acid test of their leadership within months. The fate of incumbent and insurgent may rest with former leader Margaret Ritchie, who could end up as king maker.

Well Eamonn, those are your doubts about the latest legacy proposals, but what would you do differently?

Brian Walker on October 1, 2015, 10:59 am

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In the Irish Times Eamonn McCann is sceptical about the proposed Stormont House Agreement Bill’s ability to deal with the past. At Westminster on October 12th, Northern Secretary Theresa Villiers will introduce legislation on dealing with the past. But the chances of it working are very small. Even handedly, he shares fears that both the Bloody Sunday police investigations involving the army, and the information given under immunity on the Disappeared involving the IRA, will finally and quietly result in …

For the AssembIy solution, it’s the Stormont House agenda, stupid!

Brian Walker on September 27, 2015, 2:30 pm

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Amid all the sterile political sparring, the most significant development in the Assembly stand- off has been the one that has been almost totally ignored – the UK governments’ publication of a summary of measures which would form the basis of a Northern Ireland (Stormont House Agreement ) Bill to be included in the Queens Speech at the beginning of the Westminster session. With the addition of the paramilitary monitoring review , the summary confirms the obvious fact that the …

Perhaps the SDLP should try letting Alasdair be Alasdair for a while, and stop apologising…

Mick Fealty on September 25, 2015, 12:23 pm

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Really crap morning for periscope this morning, so I had to do it in three bites, all of which break off abruptly before the end… Premise is that whether Big Al attack on SF and the SDLP was a gaffe or not, but that the North Belfast News scoop captured the real Alasdair McDonnell, blunt, forthright and intentionally revealing. As one senior nationalist strategist put it to me, “this is what I recommended to the party a few years ago …

Culture of ignoring the law and disorder is the real block to peace

Mick Fealty on September 18, 2015, 5:14 pm

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LAW AND DISORDER: Gerry Adams wants no preconditions going into these talks next week. But as Warren Little points out we do need to talk about a more general problem of tolerance for organised crime.

Northern Ireland will continue to be a source of indecision for @UKLabour, even under Corbyn

Mick Fealty on September 17, 2015, 12:51 pm

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Labour Party in Northern Ireland

LIMITATIONS OF POWER: Irrespective of Jeremy Corbyn’s personal preference for reunification, it would be a grave error for the new Opposition leader to assume everyone shares his view – even within his own ranks.

Labour’s New Leadership…

Pete Baker on September 12, 2015, 12:44 pm

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Tom Watson has been elected deputy leader [not worth a bucket of warm piss? – Ed] on the third count and, as expected, Jeremy Corbyn is now the new leader of the Labour Party having taken 59.4% of the vote in the first round. Phil Rogers has a breakdown of voting by category – full party members, affiliated (trade union members) and registered (those who paid £3 to vote). Labour leadership election result by category of voters pic.twitter.com/5lSWU3johL — Phil Rodgers …

Will Sinn Fein emerge as winners once again?

Brian Walker on September 10, 2015, 1:28 pm

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For general stimulation, Kevin Toolis, a noted historian of the IRA, presents the millennarian version of Sinn Fein’s outlook in the Times(£) For the IRA and Sinn Fein, the collapse of Ulster’s power-sharing executive shortly before Irish voters go to the polls is a perfect political storm that could sweep Gerry Adams to power in Dublin.. And of course, untainted by ever having held national office, Sinn Fein, Ireland’s only cross-border party, presents itself as the leftish unblemished defenders of …

Nearly two decades of sectarian politics have produced increasing indifference to politics, which is progress of a kind. Age, education and income are now the great dividing lines.

Brian Walker on September 10, 2015, 10:34 am

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The Guardian’s Henry McDonald reports an advance of the findings of a complex opinion survey carried out by Social Market Research Belfast for four universities and coordinated by a team including Professor Peter Shirlow, now at Liverpool. In common with the NI Life and Times opinion surveys the poll confirms a much more complex state of public opinion than a straight standoff between unionist and nationalist or a hardening of attitudes between them. A huge amount of political agnosticism is …

Are you impressed with the latest Assembly moves?

Brian Walker on September 9, 2015, 2:47 pm

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Gaming in the Assembly crisis reaches new heights ( or depths) with the DUP delivering an undisclosed ultimatum to the secretary of state and the Ulster Unionists implementing their own ultimatum by refusing to take part in talks on the basis of the Stormont House Agreement, even though Mike Nesbitt’s way out of one part of the impasse is through the same Stormont House Agreement. Meanwhile Sinn Fein postures above the fray as yet another old warrior enters the frame. …

“Perhaps we will wake up on Saturday afternoon and find it has all been a bad dream.”

Pete Baker on September 6, 2015, 1:21 pm

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Ahead of the election of their new leader, in the Guardian Andrew Rawnsley samples the mood, of despair, among the moderates of the parliamentary Labour Party. Labour MPs, as a collective, are still getting their stunned heads round what is happening to their party. Because the hard left had been fought – and apparently crushed – so long ago, it simply did not occur to them that it might revive, least of all in the person of a 66-year-old colleague who …

Con politics… – redux

Pete Baker on September 5, 2015, 6:43 pm

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The caption may not be as perfect a fit this time round, but you should get the gist… Just saying, again… [Put… the bunny… back… in the box. – Ed] Pete Baker

Who is responsible and what’s at stake in the Assembly standoff

Brian Walker on September 3, 2015, 12:00 pm

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David McKittrick emerges from retirement to pass a magisterial verdict on the Assembly in the Newsletter, while the paper has just run a long and fascinating interview with David Trimble by Alex Kane. His view of the history since 1998 is not a million miles from the familiar saying that Sinn Fein were clever enough to play their weaknesses to advantage while unionists were too stupid and bigoted to realise that they’d won. Presumably recorded before the latest developments in …

“the involvement of those Provisional IRA ‘structures’ in the events leading up to, and including, the murder of Kevin McGuigan”

Mick Fealty on September 2, 2015, 3:46 pm

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So, here. With a few notable exceptions, many commentators seem to be struggling with the particulars of the current crisis… For all the inattention of the London Press, the problem hasn’t eluded the Times of London, whose leader today is pretty unambiguous. In the Guardian Mary Dejevsky’s analysis appears to miss some of the more granular political detailing, describing “politics in Northern Ireland as singularly resistant to the ambiguity that oils the wheels of diplomacy”. Her colleague the media critic Roy Greenslade points the finger …