No public appetite for general election re-run
It seems clear that some members of Fianna Fáil may have their “tails up” because of the very significant improvement in seat numbers and in their share of the General Election vote. This positive feeling which they have about themselves contrasts with the sense that Fianna Fáil was a toxic political brand from 2009 onwards. […]
Why the rise of Trump is a global issue
It is truly an irony that many sophisticated European liberals now look back at the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H Bush Senior as periods when the western world’s fate lay in safe hands. But the continuing degradation of rational politics in the US by the modern Republican party is creating a nostalgia even for figures whose […]
The peace process must now largely be seen as military capitulation disguised as a political transformation
In an intriguing recent radio discussion on BBC last week, John Ware, presenter of a Panorama programme on Stakeknife and Kieran Conway, a self-described former Provo intelligence officer and author of “Southside Provo”, discussed the significance of the now accepted belief that Fred Scappaticci was simultaneously a British spy and the IRA’s chief counter-intelligence interrogator, torturer, and executioner in respect of persons suspected of being lower level informants within the IRA.