Page 33 - Sam Mcbride News Today

The first Stormont Speaker has said that Northern Ireland is moving towards de facto joint authority in the absence of the Assembly.

Whither unionism? What has been a familiar question after multiple electoral setbacks is now an existential one. If unionism continues on its current trajectory, it will disappear as a serious political force.

Even when political change happens suddenly, as it has in this election, the true scale of what has been happening can be obscured.

Sir — After a full week of pleading, I convinced my father to bring me to the Munster final between Cork and Limerick in 1947. It was on in Thurles, but that wasn’t where we were headed...

It happened quietly, almost imperceptibly, in the dullest election for many years. But the outcome of this contest involves a strategic shift in Northern Ireland’s politics.

The Sinn Féin tidal wave which has swept Northern Ireland can be traced back to maternity wards in the years after the Good Friday Agreement in which Catholic births dramatically overtook those of Protestants.

The Stormont department best known for the cash for ash scandal paid thousands of pounds to a controversial consultancy to create six ‘core values’ — one of which is unironically called ‘fire in the belly’.

It happened quietly, almost imperceptibly, in the dullest election for many years. But the outcome of this contest involves a strategic shift in Northern Ireland’s politics.

The Chief Constable is to be questioned about the PSNI’s improper spying on its own officers — something which is likely to cost taxpayers millions of pounds at a time when frontline policing is facing budget cuts.

Imagine the scene: the Gold State Coach containing a newly crowned monarch is travelling up The Mall towards Buckingham Palace surrounded by all the pomp of the British establishment. Amid the ranks of marching soldiers keeping time to the military bands are members of the Irish Defence Forces in their ceremonial uniforms, travelling in unison with soldiers from Bangladesh, Gabon, Cameroon and more than 30 other countries.