It was a day when the ‘B’ words fell from the political dictionary. The bluff and bluster of Boris; all the talk of Brexit, the border and the backstop, and SDLP deputy leader Nichola Mallon’s description of a “blunt” first meeting with the new Prime Minister. It was also a day of protest on the…

  IT was one of those occasions.  A republican set piece gathering in Belfast; a speech from Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald to a packed room – with the media allowed to record this before being asked to leave. An important day also for reading the room; perhaps even more so than the words.…

  There is something quite ludicrous and laughable about a Paisley advising anyone to “dial down the megaphone diplomacy”.  This is not 1985 – not that period in our politics when the thunderous voice of the late Ian Paisley senior shouted down the Anglo-Irish Agreement in those guldering words of NEVER,NEVER,NEVER, neverrrrrr.  Politics today is…

In every political negotiation there are moments of chatter, when talk and messages come from the inside out. The challenge is trying to decode the above. So, what is the latest bavardage about the Stormont Talks? In the chatter, there is the suggestion of more detailed negotiations in recent days involving the DUP and Sinn Fein. POLITICAL…

Whatever grievances may lie behind the turbulence evident in the actions of groups and individuals at sites of contentious bonfires, they cannot justify the indulgent and hostile defiance of environmental good sense or the collateral social, political and financial fallout. If it is some form of strategy in a perceived ‘culture war’ ‘its’ proponents need…

There is a human rights and equality crisis in this society and it is one of the reasons why we are where we are. It remains a reasonable expectation that the Good Friday Agreement would deliver more than simply ‘relatively stable’ power-sharing government. The transformative dimensions were lost along the way, and the political system…

We Northern Irelanders are heading towards a bing bang wallop bust up between now and Christmas. Forget the media mood music of sweet nothin’s. Watch the final countdown unravel to point of Brexit, the backstop, rights and wrongs, devolution and direct rule all caught in the circumnavigation of smouldering bitterness – a crunch period in…

  The talk is of another of those ‘pushes’ and of the two governments looking for some sort of outcome to the Stormont negotiations this week. It may well be just some more of the same talk that has been a feature of these discussions throughout the past nine/ten weeks. Deadlines in the politics of…

When the House of Commons voted yesterday to legislate for gay marriage and British-style abortion for Northern Ireland, it proved that anything can happen to the province during a prolonged absence of an Assembly.  Issues that were once described as “devolved matters” are no longer so. I believe that those who governed Northern Ireland so…

I greatly appreciate his recognition of the positive that already exists and totally endorse all that he has said about the urgent need for leadership at every level of political and civic society if we are not to lose that which has already been achieved. As others have rightly pointed out, there are realities regarding…

In his closing remarks to the Northern Ireland Policing Board in June, the former Chief Constable called on the broader Nationalist and Republican institutions to do more to encourage people from a similar background to consider a career in policing. Likewise, in his first communiqué as Chief Constable, Simon Byrne stated that there was “more work…

There is a picture emerging in a jigsaw of commentary about the politics of this place; a commentary that is much more significant and relevant than the farce that passes for and pretends to be a negotiation on Stormont’s hill. Just look at how twitter came alive to the thinking and words of actor Jimmy…

By noon on Friday the Northern Ireland Office will have published a long overdue report on its legacy consultation – a document that will be structured around the seventeen questions asked more than a year ago in May 2018. That consultation was about the proposed structure to address the past; a new Historical Investigations Unit (HIU), an…

  Remember the talk at the outset of these Talks? That narrow window in which to push through an agreement to rebuild the broken politics of this place. Weeks later, the chat now is about the ‘twelfth window’ and the nervousness of July when the instincts of some will be to pull or hide behind…

One negotiator speaking with me on Sunday, gave this assessment: “I don’t think Sinn Fein have moved away from their demand, and the DUP has not moved away from its opposition.” He was describing positions on a stand-alone Irish Language Act; and, as these talks move into the month of July, this was his prediction:…