Parties – Page 22 – Slugger O'Toole

“Those who the police believe ordered and implemented the murder of Kevin McGuigan are mainstream not mavericks.”

Pete Baker on September 2, 2015, 1:42 am

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Via Newshound. And for the, apparently, hard of understanding. Suzanne Breen hones in on the important detail at the heart of the current political kerfuffle. From Suzanne Breen in the Sunday Life The North has plunged into a political crisis, the Stormont institutions are on the brink of collapse, and unionist and nationalist politicians are bickering as though the peace process never happened. It may be argued that the events leading to this chaos matter not a jot to people in the Republic. IRA …

Sinn Fein’s self interest more than pressure over the IRA, will keep the Assembly in being

Brian Walker on August 30, 2015, 12:48 pm

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So the pressure is mounting on Sinn Fein North and South to do – what exactly? Agree to accept or at least put up with a revival of the International Monitoring Commission and dissociate themselves from the IRA? This would require a new political calculus all round. Still, the Irish government may have made a move in that direction. Will the British follow? The Sunday Times (£) reports a revival of pressure in the Shinners over the IRA’s ill gotten …

Closer engagement not boycott, is the route out of crisis for the Northern Ireland Assembly

Brian Walker on August 29, 2015, 2:48 pm

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Is Jeffrey Donaldson MP offering a way out of “ crisis?” He said it would be a different situation if Sinn Féin “came clean” and said murder had been carried out by members of the Provisional IRA and said they would work to rectify the situation. He said the Sinn Féin leadership needed to “recognise they have a problem” and then work could begin to solve the crisis. The IMC issued its final report in February 2011 and Mr Donaldson …

The peace process phase is over. A new age of political progress is what we need

Brian Walker on August 27, 2015, 4:04 pm

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I hesitate just a little to criticise Peter Osborne ‘s piece on Galvanising the Peace as I bow respectfully to the view that dialogue and contacts are essential for peace, reconciliation and development. But we really have to move on from this sort of generalised approach to more rigorous analysis and hard questions leading to more real solutions. We should have learned by now that yet another appeal like Galvanising the Peace won’t crack it. It lets the political class …

“The real story is not the existence of some skeleton structure, but the sound of gunfire…”

Pete Baker on August 27, 2015, 3:02 pm

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It’s not the still-extant Provisional IRA structures that are the immediate cause for concern, although “stupid” questions could, and should, be asked about their ultimate purpose, it’s the involvement of those Provisional IRA ‘structures’ in the events leading up to, and including, the murder of Kevin McGuigan, and the continued denials [of that reality! – Ed] which have followed. As I mentioned previously …a key element in the recent events under investigation, which I noted previously, [is] the Provisional IRA investigation into …

The collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly can be averted

Brian Walker on August 27, 2015, 10:51 am

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The Ulster Unionists appear to have succumbed to the revulsion many unionists feel at the very idea of sharing power with the spawn of the IRA that most of them have suppressed every day since 1998. The danger now is that they will set off a chain reaction and take the DUP with them. The DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson says the UUP’s move does nothing to support the DUP’s aim to exclude Sinn Fein from the Executive, even if this …

Yes Alasdair, the SDLP oppose republican criminality but is anybody listening?

Brian Walker on August 26, 2015, 11:50 am

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Signs of life in the SDLP are an interesting sidebar in the great IRA structures kerfuffle. Alasdair McDonnell has taken up the challenge to contradict the Guardian’s Henry McDonald’s charge below in yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph, which is basically that the SDLP has played mini-me to Sinn Fein for far too long. The SDLP may have stopped passively supporting the Sinn Fein line through those tortuous post-Good Friday Agreement negotiations, and the party is no longer perhaps the Shinners’ advert-adjuncts, but its …

Tánaiste: “This is an insidious threat to Northern Ireland’s future as a healthy, stable democracy, and therefore a threat to the whole of this island.”

Pete Baker on August 25, 2015, 7:00 pm

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Brian’s weariness at another political crisis notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to dismiss reaction to recent events as a “kerfuffle”. There are legitimate concerns, and two men have been murdered. The Irish Justice Minister, Fine Gael’s Frances Fitzgerald, has asked the Garda Commissioner for a “fresh assessment” of Provisional IRA activities to take into account “what the PSNI have been learning about any PIRA structures as a result of [the rigorous investigation being carried out by the PSNI into the …

Villiers: “My understanding is, very much in line with that of the chief constable, that a number of the organisational structures of the Provisional IRA still exist…”

Pete Baker on August 24, 2015, 5:50 pm

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Sinn Féin continue with their policy of denial [of reality… – Ed], although Gerry Kelly has come closest to acknowledging that reality according to this RTÉ report Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr Kelly said based on the political evidence over the past ten years, the IRA has not been active and therefore does not exist in the circumstances that people are talking about. Hmmm… Meanwhile, the governments continue to make excuses. From an Irish Independent report yesterday Earlier this year, in …

“Members of PIRA carried out their own investigation” into the Davison killing…

Pete Baker on August 22, 2015, 4:37 pm

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In the Belfast Telegraph, Liam Clarke highlights a significant point from the police assessment of Provisional IRA involvement in the murder of Kevin McGuigan – a point that was not included in earlier reports of that police assessment. From the Belfast Telegraph article Police have confirmed that senior IRA members conducted an inquiry into the death of Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison, gunned down in May, and identified Kevin McGuigan as the likely killer. Brian Rowan also mentioned that ‘inquiry’ in his …

PSNI Det Supt Geddes: “It is my assessment at this stage and my belief that people who are members of the Provisional IRA were involved in this murder, but we will not speculate on at what level.”

Pete Baker on August 20, 2015, 8:57 pm

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The police held a press conference today on the on-going investigation into the murder of former Provisional IRA member Kevin McGuigan Sr in the Short Strand area of Belfast last week – he had reportedly been “warned by the police that he was under threat from republicans” following the murder of former PIRA commander Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison in May. Of several arrests earlier this week one man has been charged with possession of a Glock pistol with intent to endanger life. The …

I’m really looking forward to the Labour leadership contest of 2017

Brian Walker on August 15, 2015, 7:08 pm

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As an old inhabitant of the Westminster bubble, I give my prophetic testimony. Having been bombarded by emails from different sections of the Labour party and paid to qualify for a vote, I’m now waiting for my ballot papers in the leadership election. For the first time in my life, I’ve declared a party allegiance. I’m only doing as a personal gesture in favour of Labour remaining a party of government. While it’s all great crack ( sic), it’s completely …

Should the Scottish Parliament and the Assemblies in Cardiff and Belfast control ” their” BBC?

Brian Walker on August 5, 2015, 4:51 pm

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The three wee Celts in the precariously devolved UK have got together – convened wouldn’t you know it – by the Scots, to agitate for a bigger slice of the BBC licence fee during the coming round of the BBC Charter review. Northern Ireland’s culture minister Caral Ni Chuilin declares: “The BBC must continue to embrace and further develop its commitment to its public obligations and the occasion of the charter renewal must be seen as an opportunity to deliver …

The centre cannot hold? Don’t be so fainthearted! Revolution is not ahead

Brian Walker on August 1, 2015, 1:27 pm

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Some reflections on the state of the centre of politics culled from recent writing. We begin with a focus on Ireland in two pieces which reveal the underlying fear of the further rise of Sinn Fein, although the main topic in each case is wider. First, an excellent survey of the ongoing study of the period of the 1916 rising and its contemporary resonance by the English historian David Reynolds, in the News Statesman. Perhaps in 2016, a century on, …

“Still, there are words for the sort of reception meted out, and the most polite are ‘low’ and ‘key’.”

Pete Baker on July 31, 2015, 5:17 pm

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch… or, rather, as far away from the ranch as you can reasonably get… For the benefit of those concerned about accountability and the democratic process… Liam Clarke has some points to make about Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Theresa Villiers, and the Northern Ireland deputy First Minister Sinn Féin MLA Martin McGuinness’ recent, separate, trips to the US. In that situation, how much priority would you give when tapped on the arm and told that the Northern Ireland …

Sinn Fein suffering for the want of a visible plan (cunning, or otherwise)?

Mick Fealty on July 29, 2015, 2:06 pm

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It’s still not clear who Martin was going to see in Washington, or why he had his picture taken on the wrong side of Pennsylvania Avenue opposite the White House. However at home Brian Feeney is not impressed: …Sinn Féin’s problem is more profound. They’ve lost direction. They’ve forgotten their raison d’etre in the north. Flying to Washington about welfare funding is piddling stuff. No one in the party is articulating how to advance their fundamental aim, Irish unity. Instead there …

The continuing welfare impasse shows that peace will survive the suspension of the Assembly

Brian Walker on July 29, 2015, 11:45 am

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On the surface at least, few outside the place are noticing. The public seem to be ignoring it, as if in a dream. Civil society stays generally schtum, like jobsworths in the old Soviet society. The parties are crying for attention. Gerry Adams has been polishing up his narrative of entitlement “By slashing hundreds of millions of pounds from the finances of the North’s Executive, the British government has attacked the ability of the political institutions to deliver for citizens.” …

NI Public Appointments Commissioner: “Despite all the supportive talk in principle I don’t see any change in the public appointment process.”

Pete Baker on July 23, 2015, 3:33 pm

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When the previous Commissioner for Public Appointments in Northern Ireland, Felicity Huston, stepped down from the role in 2011 she, pointedly, wished whoever her successor would be “the best of luck”, noting that She said there were difficulties asserting her role as a regulator at Stormont. “People recruit people who look like them, sound like them and have the same life and work experiences,” she said. The commissioner said there were other issues about the independence of her position. “The …

It’s authenticity, not left or right wing, that’s scoring with oppositions

Brian Walker on July 23, 2015, 12:18 pm

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Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn although poles apart, have nevertheless more in common than Corbyn would like to admit (Trump wouldn’t take Corbyn under his notice). Not as political ideologues but as icons of “authenticity,” that holy grail of reality politics which itself is ironically becoming a marketing category. Authenticity works for Labour’s Alan Johnson because with equal irony, he has resisted attempts to recruit him for the Labour leadership. The message is clear. Authenticity is a quality that thrives …

The poignant comparison between Mhairi Black and Bernadette Devlin

Brian Walker on July 18, 2015, 1:23 pm

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The reception given to Mhairi Black, the SNP MP who at 20 is the youngest MP since the 1830s brings to mind the similar reception given to another Baby of the House, Bernadette Devlin who was elected in the byelection of April 1969 a few days short of her 22nd birthday. The contrasts are of course vast. With Bernadette we have the advantage of hindsight to have followed the course of a damaged, even tragic life and embittered politics, affected no …