‘I think it will happen and I think Britain will be pleased.’  So replied Liam Neeson to Sky News’s political editor, Beth Rigby, when she asked him in a recent interview what he thought about the prospects of Irish unity.   ‘I think it could happen, but everybody has to be appeased,’ he added. ‘The Protestants in the North of […]

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 […]

So, there we have it: the Windsor Framework. The oldest trick in the book is to rebrand a problem.  It might still be the Northern Ireland Protocol (Reformed Version), but it now bears the Monarch’s secular name. It’s hardly subtle. Rishi Sunak has set a purity test for die-hard unionists: Get with the programme or […]

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 […]

Watch this Battle of Ideas festival debate produced in association with irishborderpoll.com. For the first time in Northern Ireland’s existence, the leader of a nationalist party is in line to become first minister. In May’s elections, Sinn Fein won the most seats – leading some to argue that the prospect of a united Ireland is […]

‘The SDLP’s nationalist, no question about,’ said the party’s South Belfast MP, Claire Hanna, responding to this website’s editor at an ‘Ireland’s Future’ event in the House of Commons last night. Kevin Rooney asked if it was still accurate to include them in a tally of parties committed to Irish unity. A reasonable question, given […]

Peter Ramsay argues that the crisis of Ulster Unionism presents an opportunity for British democracy to demonstrate the world-historical power of national sovereignty. Our tragedy is that there is no political force in Britain able to seize it. Sinn Fein’s victory in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections marks a historical turning point. For the first […]

I had intended to jump straight on the voting figures from last week’s elections and tot-up what they meant, vis-à-vis Irish unity. I have to say that I am indebted to Daithí McKay for beating me to it and saving me the arduous task (and eye strain) of ploughing through yet more tables of figures. […]

The recent opinion poll by the BBC indicated that a majority of people, north and south of the Irish border, believe that a reunited Ireland is the probable outcome of future political developments. If that is accurate, then there is an onus on all to ensure that this takes place as smoothly as possible.  There […]