486. The total audience at one of Jamie Bryson’s anti-Protocol rallies? The number of Catholics Kate Hoey believes work at BBC NI? The annual millions in EU funding that Northern Ireland now misses out on, thanks to Brexit? Plausibly all of the above, however it’s actually the majority in the House Commons this afternoon that […]

Amid the wreckage of the British economy, collapsing public services, sewage-strewn beaches, broken railways and interminable industrial action, Rishi Sunak has a glimmer of hope. A deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol inches into view. It’s not perfect, from his point of view, with a big chunk of his backbenchers grumbling about the residual role […]

Broccoli? A doorstop? Is it a space invader to celebrate Northern Ireland’s burgeoning video gaming industry? It appears this dreadful image is in fact supposed to be a statue to commemorate Northern Ireland’s centenary. You may recall its brief appearance last year, when Sinn Fein vetoed its proposed erection in the grounds of Parliament Buildings. […]

‘They [unionists] either have to get off the ice and get on with the job or the ice is going to crack beneath their feet and they are going to find themselves in pretty cold and chilly water.’ A pretty blunt warning this week to the DUP and unionist refuseniks, who, after facing humiliation in […]

Third time’s a charm? Not if you’re trying to have the Northern Ireland Protocol struck down in the British courts. Having already lost their case in the High Court and Court of Appeal, we can be permitted a measure of schadenfreude at the host of unionist luminaries who rolled the dice a third time only […]

Political soothsaying is a notoriously inaccurate pursuit, yet the temptation to engage in a spot of festive prediction-making is just too enticing, I’m afraid. Here, then, in a spirit of wild-eyed optimism, and reckless fortune-telling I offer the following… So, 2023 is the unwanted year, sitting, as it does, just outside of the commemorations from […]

How do you solve a problem like Stormont? I’m not referring to the current impasse that has mothballed Parliament Buildings since last February. That will resolve itself when the British government cuts a deal with the EU over the Protocol and bounces the DUP back into the executive in coming weeks. No, I am talking […]

Okay, so riddle me this. Last Sunday’ poll in the Irish Times says 50% of people in Northern Ireland want to stay in the UK, with just 27% backing Irish unity. Pretty dramatic stuff, but not all as it seems, (as I mentioned in my piece yesterday). Further findings from the poll are revealed today, […]

Well then, that’s it I suppose. Irish unity is a pipedream; no closer now than ever. Let’s pack up the tent and all go home. Yesterday’s poll in the Irish Times, commissioned by the ARINS project and carried out by Ipsos is pretty conclusive. Half of people in Northern Ireland want to remain in the […]

Nearly a quarter of a century on, we are all pretty familiar with the term in the Good Friday Agreement. There can only be a border poll on Irish unity if it appears ‘likely’ to the Secretary of State that ‘a majority of those voting would express a wish that Northern Ireland should cease to […]