Article Category: Bird's Eye View

NORTHERN TALKS CHARADE

January 25, 2018

THE NORTH has a new secretary of state, Karen Bradley (47), an accountant first elected in 2010. Bradley is precisely the type of... Read more »

NEVER IN A POLITICAL LIFETIME

January 11, 2018

HERE WE go again. You could write the script. The new northern secretary invites the parties to Stormont. Desultory talks ensue. An artificial... Read more »

UNIONIST ANTI BREXIT CAMP

December 14, 2017

ATTITUDES TO Brexit in the North are a lot more complicated than they appear at first sight. Broadly speaking it’s true northern nationalists... Read more »

INDIRECT RULE FOR THE NORTH?

November 30, 2017

LEO VARADKAR told the Dáil on November 20 that if Sinn ] and the DUP couldn’t cobble together an executive he would call... Read more »

GROUNDHOG DEADLINES

November 2, 2017

TO NO ONE’S surprise the DUP and Sinn Féin sailed through northern secretary James Brokenshire’s sixth “deadline” last Monday night. Many people thought... Read more »

DEAL OR NO DEAL?

October 19, 2017

Sinn Féin and the DUP have now entered their customary period of brinkmanship, keeping Dublin and London on tenterhooks about the chances of... Read more »

The Russia-China Plan TO CONNECT ‘EURASIA’

September 21, 2017

by PEPE ESCOBAR THE United Nations Security Council’s 15-0 vote to impose a new set of sanctions on North Korea somewhat disguises the... Read more »

COVENEY BOWS TO THE DUP

September 7, 2017

SIMON COVENEY was in Belfast on Tuesday listening to the local parties to assess whether there was any point in convening a new... Read more »

SF: Reluctant to Re-Enter Assembly

August 24, 2017

Danny Morrison SPEAKING at Féile an Phobail in west Belfast a fortnight ago, Danny Morrison, Sinn Féin’s most successful ever spin doctor said,... Read more »

BONFIRES TO BE BANNED

August 10, 2017

SINN FÉIN has moved to exploit a gaping hole that loyalists have left open in the north’s culture wars. For years 11th night... Read more »

GOVE’S DUP LOVE-IN

July 27, 2017

Michael Gove THE visit of Michael Gove, Britain’s controversial Environment Secretary, to one of the north’s premier agricultural shows at Antrim was for... Read more »

TORIES TO PUSH EQUALITY AGENDA

July 13, 2017

HEIDI ALLEN, Conservative Cambridgeshire South, expressed the outrage of many MPs on both sides of Britain’s parliament when she told the House of... Read more »

WHY SINN FÉIN WILL JOIN EXECUTIVE

June 29, 2017

SIMON COVENEY certainly got thrown in at the deep end in Belfast. His first response to the astonishingly brazen deal between the DUP... Read more »

LEO VARADKAR AND THE DUP

June 15, 2017

RAY BASSET, former joint secretary of the British-Irish secretariat in Belfast, earlier this week welcomed Leo Varadkar’s commitment to “re-engage with the north”,... Read more »

UUP TO SUFFER IN NI ELECTION

June 2, 2017

All elections in the north are polarising but none more than British general elections using the sudden death first-past-the-post voting system. The results... Read more »

SDLP’S FAUX CANDIDATES

May 17, 2017

THE SDLP stands accused of putting up no-hope candidates in two northern constituencies in the UK general election. This is to avoid the... Read more »

BORDER POLL ON THE CARDS?

May 3, 2017

CROWING about Ireland’s diplomatic coup last Saturday when the EU agreed that the north could rejoin the EU if it voted for Irish... Read more »

SNAP ELECTION IN THE NORTH

April 19, 2017

THERESA MAY’S snap election call may or may not mean a second Assembly election will be held simultaneously with the Westminster poll. Either... Read more »

BROKENSHIRE’S BROKEN STRATEGY

April 5, 2017

JAMES BROKENSHIRE, Britain’s hapless northern secretary, has managed to produce unanimous agreement among the northern parties on one point. They all use the... Read more »

VARADKAR’S UNIONIST LINE

March 23, 2017

LEO VARADKAR went to France for St Patrick’s Day and gave interviews in the Irish embassy in Paris to French news media which... Read more »

TRIUMPH FOR SF IN NORTH

March 9, 2017

UNIONISTS are still coming to terms with the new electoral landscape in the north after last week’s Assembly election. It’s worth having a... Read more »

RED LINES IN BELFAST

February 23, 2017

VOTERS IN the north next Thursday won’t be electing a new executive. They’ll be electing negotiating teams. No one, including Dublin and London,... Read more »

A ‘BRUTAL’ BAPTISM FOR O’NEILL

January 25, 2017

SINN FÉIN has shot the DUP’s fox. In the 2016 Assembly elections, Arlene Foster campaigned on the basis that a vote for the... Read more »

ARLENE FOSTER OUT OF HER DEPTH

January 12, 2017

THIS CRISIS in the north’s institutions, the most serious for a decade, has been a long time coming. Over the Christmas holidays leading... Read more »

BERTIE’S COME BACK DEAD IN THE WATER

December 14, 2016

THE interminable factionalising of Bertie’s Good Old Boys (BeGOBs) in trying to resurrect the glory days were given the kiss of death by... Read more »

ARLENE SPLASHES THE (C)ASH

December 14, 2016

THEY call it the ‘cash for ash fiasco’ or as one assembly member put it, ‘a squander made in Stormont’. It’s going to... Read more »

FIANNA FÁIL INVADES THE NORTH

December 1, 2016

LAST WEEK Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness issued a joint statement listing all the aspects of administration where they were forging ahead. It... Read more »

ARLENE FOSTER BLOWS OUT DUBLIN

November 3, 2016

OSCAR WILDE said there was only one thing in life worse than being talked about and that’s not being talked about. Currently that’s... Read more »

DUP’S EIGHT CRITICAL FOR MAY

October 20, 2016

THERESA MAY, the British prime minister, is adamant she will deliver Brexit, “the will of the British people”, but she faces immense problems... Read more »

SINN FEÍN’S FAUSTIAN PACT

October 5, 2016

MARTIN MCGUINESS went to the British Labour party conference in Liverpool on 26 September and told delegates at the annual ‘Ulster Fry’ breakfast... Read more »

FRANK CUSHNAHAN AND THE DUP

September 21, 2016

AT STORMONT’S finance committee last week Jim Allister QC, the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice leader, tried to raise the committee’s stalled inquiry into... Read more »

BREXIT BACKLASH IN NI WASTELAND

September 7, 2016

WHILE PEOPLE in the Republic argue the merits of appealing the EU’s €13bn tax demand from Apple, in the north the prospect of... Read more »

COULD A RUSSIAN-LED COALITION DEFEAT HILLARY’S WAR PLANS?

August 24, 2016

by GARY LEUPP THE REPRESENTATION of Russia by the US State Department as an “existential threat” to the US is preposterous fantasy. Just... Read more »

PARAMILITARIES TO SCOOP £50 MILLION

July 28, 2016

AT THE beginning of July a memorial banner was hung from a pole in Dungannon extolling the murderous activities of Billy Wright, known... Read more »