On this site we have argued on a number of occasions that the last refuge of a weak political argument is the argument according to inevitability. In the case of…
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The Northern Ireland Question
The reminder that sometimes there is a need to repeat well considered nationalist shibboleths and certainties was again brought to attention with the recent post on Joint Authority – resurrecting…
Dreary Option of Joint Authority Emerges Once Again
In April 1994 the Cadogan Group published a pamphlet JOINT AUTHORITY AND THE NORTHERN IRELAND PROBLEM. It was written to challenge an idea which was being touted as the logical…
Of paradoxes
Newton Emerson is a journalist whose articles are always worth reading. His unique contribution is to engage honestly and intelligently with Irish politics without indulging those liberal pieties, that all…
Running out of options
There has been much focus on restoring devolution to Northern Ireland, and that focus has been in the context of avoiding the return of direct administration from Westminster. However, to…
The End isn’t nigh
Back in 2008 Arthur Aughey wrote of “Endism” as a radical version of Hegel’s Philosophy of History, the appeal of which is its suggestion that ‘the good is already fulfilled just in virtue…
Has nationalism over-reached?
There have been two interesting articles in newspapers this week. Both address the current ‘Condition of Scotland’ question. For Northern Ireland unionism, which always likes to consider its situation unique and…
Distant dreaming
In considering the article by academics Christopher Kissane and David Kenny (one from London School of Economics and the other from Trinity College Dublin) in today’s Irish Times (18 August),…
Opportunity knocks
We don’t yet know how Brexit will affect Northern Ireland exactly, but the referendum result certainly revived the nationalist trope that Irish unity is ‘inevitable’. The Republic’s national parliament recently published…
Cultural effrontery
On 9 August there was an interesting and revealing article in The Irish Times by Rosemary Jenkinson, artist-in-residence at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast. The title was: ‘I’m a Belfast Protestant…