Northern ireland

Arlene Foster has announced that she will be standing down as DUP leader on the 28 May and First Minister of Northern Ireland at the end of June, bowing to the inevitable after the arithmetic suggested that 80 per cent of her Stormont and Westminster colleagues were set against her leadership continuing.  This will be welcomed by those who in recent days orchestrated manoeuvres against her; Foster staging a defiant last stand had the potential to turn the leadership election poisonous very quickly, which was the last thing the embattled party needs. Who would honestly want to replace Foster now, such is the troubling in-tray she is handing over to her successor?

Prince Philip’s death presented Sinn Fein with a particular challenge, given that the IRA murdered his beloved uncle. ‘I am sorry that happened. Of course, that is heartbreaking,’ said the party’s leader Mary Lou McDonald this weekend. But if the words sounded sincere, don’t be fooled. Sinn Fein learnt a difficult lesson back in 2011, when the Queen and Prince Philip visited, the first time for a century that a British monarch set foot in Dublin. Back then, they completely misjudged Irish public opinion and refused to participate, ending up looking like kids outside a sweet shop with noses pressed to the window. The Queen got an approval rating in

The process that delivered us the Northern Ireland Protocol already seems to have been rewritten in official memory. It suits most parties involved to pretend the outcome was inevitable. For Brussels, it helps them defend an arrangement designed to ‘protect the peace’ which is instead corroding loyalist support for the Belfast Agreement. For those in London, it is infinitely preferable to pretend that they were honouring the UK’s ‘obligations under the Good Friday Agreement’ rather than own one of the most abject episodes of British diplomacy in recent memory. It also helps to shift the blame onto preferred targets. So Boris Johnson gets execrated for lying to unionists about his

On the 23rd anniversary of the signing of the Belfast Agreement, it’s safe to say celebrations here in Northern Ireland will be muted at best. Over the past ten days, hundreds of rioters wielding bricks, bottles, stones and petrol bombs in Belfast have injured more than 70 police officers, most notably in the west of the city, where working-class loyalists and republicans live cheek by jowl. In terrifying scenes, a bus driver narrowly escaped injury when his vehicle was petrol bombed and left to coast down a street. The trigger for the violence was the decision by Northern Ireland’s public prosecution service not to bring charges against 24 Sinn Féin

Northern Ireland is routinely voted one of the happiest places to live in the UK. A few weeks ago, a survey revealed that Belfast was the best city to raise a family in Britain. The Province is in the top ten digital economies of the future. A world-class film production industry is transforming it into the Hollywood of Europe adding tens of millions of pounds to the local economy. It’s a stark contrast to the ugly scenes from over the Irish Sea flashing across our screens this week. Working-class loyalist communities are in a dangerously mutinous mood that is hard to square with this parallel world. Alienation and opportunity often exist in

It is depressingly appropriate that a weekend which started on Good Friday was one which illustrated the shaky foundations of the agreement which brought a form of peace to Northern Ireland. Twenty three years on from that landmark deal, discontent among the Province’s unionist and loyalist community is beginning to mount. Violence once again erupted on the streets of Derry last night. It was a repeat of the ugly scenes that played out over Easter weekend in Belfast’s loyalist Sandy Row area. Petrol bombs were flung and a total of 32 police officers were injured. The latest spark is mounting unhappiness among unionist pro-British groups at the Northern Ireland Protocol.

On Monday morning, Clément Beaune, Emmanuel Macron’s Europe Minister, clipped out the section of his media interview criticising Britain’s vaccination strategy and posted it on Twitter. He declared: ‘What is happening in the UK is not something I envy. It is a strategy of massive acceleration which also means taking more risks because the Covid situation is much worse there.’ Such remarks are becoming something of a habit for Beaune. He fired off tweets lambasting Brexit in the days after the deal was done and grinned broadly in an interview this year when he was questioned about reports that British cabinet ministers had asked him to tone it down on

Boris Johnson has made his Brexit negotiator David Frost a full member of the Cabinet and the UK chair of both the partnership council, which manages the UK/EU trade deal, and the joint committee, which handles the Northern Ireland protocol. Frost’s appointment is a recognition that someone is needed at the heart of government to handle the EU relationship – that it can’t be treated as simply a Foreign Office matter, and that it needs to be a full-time job (Michael Gove had previously been the UK chair of these committees). The challenge for Frost will be to get out of the negotiations mindset. The withdrawal negotiations and the trade

The purpose of the Northern Ireland protocol was meant to be to square the circles of simultaneously protecting the single market and stability in Northern Ireland. But, as I write in the magazine this week, there are signs it is beginning to undermine stability there. The fundamental problem is that Unionists are increasingly against it. The First Minister and DUP leader Arlene Foster tweeted this morning that Northern Ireland must be ‘freed from the protocol’. We could be in a nightmare situation where direct rule from London had to be imposed to fully implement the protocol Now, the EU can say that the checks the Unionists are objecting to are

Ursula von der Leyen now admits that she overreacted in the EU’s vaccine row with the UK. She has spoken of her ‘regret’ that Article 16 of the Northern Ireland border protocol was triggered by the European Commission in a Friday night fit of pique at the end of last month. But there is a sense in Brussels that the British are still trying to exploit her misstep. This claim is not entirely baseless. The UK is getting increasingly worried about the protocol, and clearly does see a chance to push for concessions now that the Commission has surrendered the moral high ground. The Northern Ireland protocol was agreed by

The next Northern Ireland assembly election must take place by 5 May next year. The MLAs voted in then will decide whether or not to continue the Northern Ireland protocol, which requires the UK authorities to apply EU rules on various goods entering Northern Ireland. If a majority voted against (that is all that would be needed as the petition of concern, which requires a higher threshold, would not apply), then the protocol would fall. At the moment, it looks very unlikely that the election will result in an anti-protocol majority. But it would clearly be bad for stability in Northern Ireland if the campaign turned into an attempt by Unionists to rally

It’s slow business for global terrorists these days with all the targets banged up under Covid house arrest. But there’s one place in the United Kingdom where it has been pretty much business as usual for violent extremism. Northern Ireland’s police service has just released its security assessment for 2020. This contains some startling information for a place with roughly the same population as Hampshire. Last year there were 39 shooting incidents and two security related deaths, the same number as in 2019. The number of bombings – which include viable devices defused by the army – actually rose year on year to 17, with 8 happening in Belfast. Imagine

Mayhem has once again engulfed 10 Downing Street with the dramatic resignation of Lee Cain, Boris Johnson’s communications chief. He was with the Prime Minister on the Vote Leave campaign — as had Dominic Cummings, Oliver Lewis and others who have formed a band of brothers in No. 10. Cain’s departure put a question mark over the future of the others, which comes at an odd time because the Brexit they all campaigned for is weeks away from a conclusion. There are huge issues facing the government: a second lockdown, due to end on 2 December. The procurement and rollout of a potential vaccine. But another deadline, just weeks away,