Published: 19 October 2019 “Sod the United Kingdom. Great Britain is fine. Leave Northern Ireland to Ireland.” This tweet was forwarded to me by a London-based, Conservative and staunchly Northern Irish Unionist friend as I began writing this. It came, he said from...
If our new PM remains resolute, he may yet unravel the torturous Irish border conundrum Published: 25 July 2019 There are, as yet, precious few signs of either the Dublin establishment or Northern Irish nationalists sharing Prime Minister Johnson’s sunny optimism...
Published: 21 June 2019 With charm, diplomacy and brains, there is no reason why he can’t secure concessions from Ireland Writing earlier this week, the Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole was in despair at the prospect of Boris Johnson becoming Tory leader. “Who...
Published: 19 May 2019 John Lippitt, who has died aged 90, was an unorthodox, swashbuckling civil servant who dominated British industrial policy in the 1970s and later became a commercial negotiator for GEC in China and South East Asia. When in 1980 he was persuaded...
Published: 23 April 2019 “What we are seeing is a new breed of terrorist coming through the ranks, and that is a very worrying situation,” said Detective Superintendent Jason Murphy on Saturday, as two teenagers were being questioned in Belfast under the Terrorism Act...
Published: 20 April 2019 “I didn’t know it was still going on,” is a comment I’ve heard frequently since Thursday night and the death of my friend Lyra McKee. But close followers of the situation in Northern Ireland are all too aware that there are still plenty of...
Published: 14 March 2019Most law-abiding people in Northern Ireland believe that anyone who committed a crime should be brought to justice – and that the terrible events of Bloody Sunday were inexcusable. What is causing enormous distress is the completely...
Its leadership will not cave in and accept a bad deal Published: 12 March 2019 Cricket has nothing on politics when it comes to being a funny old game. Who could have thought that Nigel Dodds, MP for Belfast North, could – for at least one bright shining moment...
Published: 24 January 2019 “If you’d like to push me and speculate on what might happen in a no-deal scenario in Ireland, I think it’s pretty obvious – you will have a hard border”, said Margaritis Schinas, the EU Chief Spokesperson on Tuesday,...
Jeremy Corbyn is trying but failing to wriggle his way out of accusations of anti-semitism, writes Ruth Dudley Edwards Published: 3 September 2018 I was having a look at Irish historical figures’ attitudes to Jews, for anti-semitism in these islands is much on my...
