Over-excited nationalists will say otherwise, but whatever happens on Thursday, the country will not unite in our lifetime Published: 3 May 2020 If the pollsters have got it right, by the weekend, although unionists will almost certainly have scored more votes than...
“What Kate Hoey says is not terribly important,” sneered Susan McKay in the Irish Times, after the furore over Hoey’s forthright foreword to the Unionist Voice Policy Studies report, Vetoing the Protocol: Restoring Cross-Community Consent Protections. Published: 18...
My apologies to Professor Colin Harvey of Ireland’s Future, an organisation whose mission is ‘Paving the way to the reunification of the island’. Published: 11 January 2022 When just before the New Year I wrote my annual list of people I would like to send to a desert...
Can the leader of the moderate Ulster Unionist Party arrest the demoralisation caused by the NI Protocol and a weak justice system? Published: 2 September 2021 There is movement afoot in Northern Irish politics. After years of a dispiriting stalemate, with two...
As polls show many voters rejecting tribalism, the two main Unionist parties are likely to be devising a joint strategy Published: 19 June 2021 It’s easy to laugh at Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party: its followers are almost all Christian and socially...
With goodwill, there is a solution that avoids a hard border either on land or in the sea Published: 5 June 2021 The briefing war between the EU and the UK led to headlines this week saying that Brexit Minister Lord Frost thinks the Northern Ireland Protocol is...
“Well when the votes were counted one parochial, backward looking, regressive who is 50 something and from Lagan Valley beat another one,” tweeted Alliance councillor Michael Long after the DUP leadership election. Published: 25 March 2021 “What is clear is that...
I’m writing this on May 3, Northern Ireland’s hundredth birthday. Published: 3 May 2021 My hope is that the next hundred years will be free of the violence and misery that was so often up to now imposed on peaceful people all over Ireland by intolerant, murderous...
Well, the tweet from editor Alistair Bushe last Wednesday saying I was joining the News Letter certainly got the Shinnerbots excited. Published: 29 September 2020 For those of you who ignore social media, these are the armies of Sinn Fein supporters who assemble on...
Labour and the call for a general election from The Times Sir, In the midst of all the knee-jerk excoriation and mockery of the DUP, I was glad to see John Brehcist (letter, Oct 24) reminding us of the horrors they and the unionist community lived through...