The last weekend before the latest deadline and still there are doubts. Doubts about whether Stormont will be up or down when we arrive at this day next week. There were two very different news conferences on Thursday. Firstly, we heard from Sinn Fein.     For the deadline of June 29th to…

  The Ulster Unionist Party has long been concerned that republicans are seeking to re-write history and produce a narrative of the Troubles whereby the State and its agents – the Police, the Army and the Intelligence services – are somehow portrayed as the ‘villains of the piece’, whilst the role of terrorists is downgraded…

  People in societies emerging out of conflict talk a lot about sharing. This is no surprise. Conflicts are often about unequal access to resources like wealth and power, turning peace into a debate about more equal shares in society. Conflicts can also have a geography in which social divisions and inequalities are segregated spatially,…

  The SDLP leader Colum Eastwood thinks there will be a deal at Stormont. He is just not sure whether it will be next week or something that will be delayed until the autumn. The talks at the Castle are in a kind of waiting room; waiting for the outcome of whatever talking is continuing…

  Presumptions are rife in Northern Ireland politics. I’ve been an MLA for well over a year now and I see the acceptance of truth around many things that are uncertain. One such acceptance surrounds the fiscal responsibility of the traditional parties – particularly the DUP. When Arlene Foster became leader of the DUP she…

  This weekend, Sinn Féin will hold the latest in a series of major conferences to promote, debate and discuss the new and agreed Ireland we are building every day. Anyone who has attended any of the conferences to date, or followed the recent extraordinary growth in the Sinn Féin vote can be in no…

  There was a sense of something different at Stormont on Monday – something about the mood and tone. Perhaps it was just the sun that brightened and cheered things up – or maybe it was the introduction of a new face and voice into this long-running talks process; a negotiation in which deadlines are…

    Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams has asserted any deal between the Democratic Unionist Party and the Conservative government is possibly a breach of the Good Friday Agreement. “Wrong” argues former Foyle MP Mark Durkan who is encyclopaedic on the Good Friday Agreement. He is adamant there is nothing in the GFA banning parties from having…

  With just twelve days to go to the latest talks deadline, a document read by this website shows a determination on the part of the British Government to close the long-running political negotiation on legacy and move to public consultation. The detailed draft paper – dated June 14th – has been shared with the…

  What if Sinn Fein can get what it needs on the Irish language, marriage equality, and a bill of rights? What then the prospects for a deal at Stormont? With talks set to develop in London, Belfast and Dublin, there are, of course, other important questions. Among them, what a proposed legacy process will…

  It felt like one of those back to school days at Stormont – waiting around for the timetable; lots of waiting and lots of talking about what might be possible in the days to come. Gerry Adams paraded what he called his “Magnificent 7” MPs and spoke of Sinn Fein being here “to do…

  Why would Sinn Féin go into an executive in which the DUP has a disproportionate degree of influence over the British government – an alleged, joint-guarantor with the Irish government of the Belfast Agreement Sinn Féin won seven seats in the Westminster general election, running on an abstentionist ticket, which has been the party’s…

    The Sunday headline writers have captured the chaos within politics – telling the stories of the confused spaces of Westminster and Stormont after the voting and counting of the past few days. Since then, we have watched Theresa May’s desperate effort to cling to power. Her reaching out to the DUP. The resignations…

    For now the DUP has a place on a big stage – a stage that is far from stable. Theresa May’s weakness is the party’s strength. Those ten seats won when the counting was done in the early hours of Friday have put the Foster/Dodds leadership into a position of some influence. The…

  By four on Friday morning we had the headlines and the detail of the election story here. The counting showed a quiet mobilisation of the unionist vote in response to the Sinn Fein surge in the March Assembly Election. Unionism had been shocked into doing something. The DUP now has 10 MPs – Jim…