Adams’ miscalculation has handed the DUP an unexpected victory
Fool or knave? Or both? This weekend Gerry Adams resembles a smoking, shell-shocked Wile E. Coyote from the Road Runner cartoon, as the full implications of his polarisation strategy for politics in the North have become apparent. He has snatched a major defeat from the jaws of his March Assembly election “victory” – entirely by […]
No bright new dawn on the horizon for post-election UK
In the early hours of Friday morning we will know whether Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election has paid off. When she announced her U-turn on an early election in April, I wrote here about the danger that a lengthy election campaign centring on Jeremy Corbyn’s suitability for power might produce voter fatigue, […]
Trump’s gaffe-fest last week reinforced his ignorant buffoonery
Any hope that office would, somehow, transform Donald Trump into a capable, functioning President of the United States has been firmly dashed by this week’s events. Trump’s odyssey from the White House to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Rome, NATO HQ in Brussels, and the G7 Summit in Sicily left a trail of visual, political, diplomatic and […]
Ireland’s corporate tax policy is no “sacred cow”
Emmanuel Macron, in the course of his successful election campaign, cited Irish corporate taxation policy as an issue which he believed that a refocused EU might address. This opinion is hardly startling, given Macron’s enthusiasm for rekindling the campaign for further EU integration. When you consider the French electoral system, its shortcomings become apparent. Rather […]
No monopoly on imagination or flexibility in Ireland’s response to Brexit
The warm and attentive reception given to Michel Barnier by the two Houses of the Oireachtas underlined the seriousness of Brexit as an issue for Ireland and the Irish hope that the UK’s departure from the EU will take place on terms that will not set back the political settlement on this island and the […]
My trip across the invisible border provided a new perspective on North-South issues
On Friday I travelled to Belfast to unveil a plaque to commemorate Eoin Mac Néill’s birth 150 years ago this year and his lengthy residence as a secondary student and undergraduate at St Malachy’s College in Belfast from 1881 to 1887. When he arrived there, as John Mc Neill from Glenarm in Antrim at the […]