On Tuesday there was an emptiness to Parliament Buildings; almost a sense of abandonment – and still no sign of the political thinking and will that will be needed to lift this place out of its mood and mire. In a political tug-of-war, it seems the knot is tightening. Just listen to some of the…

  Sinn Féin’s strategic project is to transform Irish society. Equality, rights and inclusion are essential to that process. An Ireland of Equals will only come about once partition has been ended and a national democracy is achieved. Sinn Féin being in government North and South is an intermediate objective to the success of that…

  “ My grandfather was a unionist. My father was a unionist. I was born a unionist and I will die a unionist” “ I could never support Sinn Fein MPs taking their seats in Westminster. It’s in my DNA.” If these two statements from current public representatives are indicative of the mind-set that the…

  Impasse can be broken by ideas and imagination. Now, more so than across the past decade, ideas and imagination are needed to navigate our way through the current political difficulties. These difficulties are well understood. They don’t need repeated and the traditional parties have us all well versed on what exactly divides them at any rate.…

  Why this inclination to spit on everything the loyalists try to do? Spit, contempt, anger and ridicule. We see it and hear it in some of the responses to the move by the Red Hand Commando to achieve “deproscription”. It made that application to the Home Secretary  which has now been referred to the Northern…

    A few days ago, as I walked one of the corridors at Stormont, a member of staff quipped that he had been playing ‘Spot the MLA’. For months now this has been a place of pretend politics. It is a pretend Parliament Buildings. There is no functioning Assembly or Executive; the place has…

    The morning after the Coveney row of the night before, there has been a development in the Stormont Talks. A speech by Michelle O’Neill speaks of intensified dialogue with the DUP for more than a week “to determine whether political progress is possible”. “We do believe progress is possible and are therefore ready…

    For the second day running Alliance MLA Stephen Farry found the words to describe the Stormont standoff. On Monday he talked about trenches getting deeper over the summer months. Then,  24 hours later, he spoke of a situation that is now “beyond bleak”. Farry was speaking on a day when Simon Coveney met…

    That credibility spot upon which the Stormont parties and governments have been jogging for the past several months is getting smaller and is about to vanish. Smaller in terms of belief and believability. If all the watching and listening at Parliament Buildings and at Stormont House on Monday was in the hope of…

    Here we are in September running out of political road. There is a decision to be made by the British and Irish governments; a decision about how much more time they can allow for a talks process that already has exhausted patience and that has been drained of credibility. Wrongly assessed by DUP…

    Over the last 10 days a number of key public statements have been made. Health Trusts outlined plans to slash £70m from the health service which is already at breaking point. Primary School principals spoke out about the crisis in education. Coroner Joe McCrisken spoke out on the need for an Executive to…

      The penny still hasn’t dropped. An Executive before an agreement is putting the cart before the horse. There should be no surprise about how swiftly and emphatically Sinn Fein dismissed the latest Arlene Foster proposal to form an Executive immediately and then, within a time-limited period, to bring forward legislation to address…

    The great thing about predicting the future is that there is no-one to tell you that you are definitely wrong. In fact recent global events such as the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump have highlighted that even the least likely of predictions can end up being correct. For those of…

  This week we should be seeing the re-energising of the entire talks process, with efforts to restore devolution intensified. In reality, the process of drift that infected things has recommenced from exactly where it left off before the summer. This was encapsulated by the call last week to restart the main talks process this week. Why…

    During the Troubles, platitudes about violence often took the place of serious engagement, which turned out to be unavoidable. There’s an echo of this in current conventional talk, whereby “the politicians should just get it up and running.” But on what terms? Does it not need to be sustainable? Perhaps counter-intuitively, serious engagement…