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Brian FeeneyThe Irish News |
The present crisis in unionism offers the opportunity for a new beginning. You might say there’s only a crisis in the DUP, and the DUP isn’t...
Last week UCL Policy Lab and Hertford College, Oxford published a report entitled ‘The World in 2040: Renewing the UK’s Approach to International...
Changed times. There was a Fianna Fáil ard fheis at the weekend. It didn’t feature in the north’s media, electronic or print. Time was the...
After the North-South Ministerial Council meeting on Monday, Leo Varadkar’s last political event as taoiseach, he emerged and gave an interview in...
Simon Harris, the new taoiseach, is from Greystones, County Wicklow. The town has expanded rapidly in the last 20-odd years and now has a population...
Barring a thunderbolt striking the Dáil on Tuesday, 37-year old Simon Harris will become the youngest taoiseach since, well, Leo Varadkar. Currently...
Here’s one change that largely went unremarked by our unionist-dominated media. Though UTV did broadcast the scene, they didn’t mention its...
Last September The Spectator, a right-of-centre magazine, published an article entitled ‘Broken Britain: what went wrong?’ It was an artful title...
Hardly a day goes by without a report in this newspaper about one or more inquests into the violent death of someone during the Troubles. Many of...
In the south, Leo Varadkar will be remembered for the 2018 abortion referendum and for his handling of the Covid pandemic, as well as for the historic...
Alliance’s Sorcha Eastwood had it half right on Tuesday when she said the debate the DUP concocted over adopting a new EU law was “about internal...
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.” There are several versions of that saying but they are all based on the observation...
We’ve been here before: to boycott or not to boycott? In April 2003 George W Bush flew in to meet Tony Blair at Hillsborough Castle. They were there...
As England’s Conservative party lurches rapidly to the right, regrettably followed by the Labour party, the person who has had most success in...
In his book Big Boys’ Rules, which Jon Boutcher refers to in his interim Kenova report, Mark Urban portrayed “a maverick culture where agent...
The last stanza of Maurice Craig’s ballad sums up the unionist worm’s eye view of the world. ‘The bricks they will bleed and the rain it will...
You have to admit the Alliance party is anything but secretive. The headlines of this week’s opinion poll may be the percentages for and against...
Micheál Martin’s Irish News interview last week was wide of the mark about the north in a number of respects but his observations on policing were...
Last week Micheál Martin told The Irish News he was “concerned that sport is becoming an issue of contention and it shouldn’t be”. He was...
During the Irish government’s announcements of funding for projects in the north and all-island developments, it went largely unnoticed that...
Perhaps you’re one of those who thought that, in the famous line of the English 1966 World Cup commentator, “They think it’s all over”....
“We are the people”, a unionist slogan you don’t hear these days, was the populist version of Craig’s infamous boast in April 1934: “We are...
You’ve read this judgement by General de Gaulle here before but it’s worth reminding you of it again: “For England there is no alliance which...
The most striking poll in recent times was the LucidTalk/Sunday Times one last October which found that 57% of 18-24 year olds would vote for a united...
As well as marking exactly two years since the DUP walked out of Stormont, last week also marked four years since Britain left the EU. Did you notice...
Command papers have been on the go since 1833. There have been thousands of them. Some are white, some are green. Wednesday’s was unique for,...
James Breslin, an American political commentator, coined the phrase ‘smoke and mirrors’ in 1975 writing about Watergate. He described politics as...
In 2010, when leaving office after Labour lost the British general election, Liam Byrne, chief secretary to the Treasury, notoriously left a note for...
From January 31 Britain will require pre-notification of all imports from the EU and export health certificates issued by vets for live animals and...
Amid the chaos, fear and loathing displayed this week in the rotten Conservative government, few people here, or indeed anywhere else, noticed the DUP...
The British government adopted the Windsor Framework on March 24 last year. Politically we’re exactly where we were then, but the newly-agreed,...
It seems 50 years from the inauguration of the power-sharing executive is a time span which has set a lot of people looking at ‘what might have...
The Alliance Party’s demand last week for the British to take action to get the assembly up and running regardless of the DUP is just plain stupid....
It’s now 59 years almost to the day since Taoiseach Seán Lemass arrived at Stormont on January 14 1965 to meet the north’s prime minister,...
Columns appearing at the beginning of a new year normally anticipate change for the better and look forward to the resolution of problems which have...
In April 1945 US troops reached the Buchenwald concentration camp complex. What they found horrified them. A week later General Eisenhower, along with...
Christmas is certainly not the season of goodwill as far as the British government, or at least its most junior department, the NIO, is concerned....
It’s an action replay of February 2018 when the DUP walked away from a deal they’d reached with the two governments and Sinn Féin to restore...
Some people may have expected the DUP to fold and agree before Christmas to resurrect the Stormont administration. Those who held that expectation did...
In his 1956 autobiography, the famous left-wing journalist Claude Cockburn said that since becoming a journalist he had often heard the advice ‘to...
In July 1972 the then UUP leader, Jim Molyneaux, was photographed in the Ulster Star inspecting an ‘honour guard’ of masked UDA men at the...
ONE of the many problems that arises from being resident in the remnant of England's first colony is that commenting on British politics is a...
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THE second, extensive, detailed ARINS (Analysing and Researching Ireland North & South) poll findings are in the course of being published in The...
Due to the technical or legal reasons, readability mode is not available for this article. Thank you for your kind understanding.
NO, Alex, the fundamental point of your argument – “The reality, of course, is that the DUP and SF worked very closely together to make...
NO, Alex, the fundamental point of your argument – “The reality, of course, is that the DUP and SF worked very closely together to make...
DRUG deaths in the north are shockingly high.
DRUG deaths in the north are shockingly high.
IN an uncanny way the DUP mirrors the Conservative party with which the DUP believed it had a close relationship since 2010.