“Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall; And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.”
The Belfast Agreement decoupled Northern Ireland’s constitutional future from day-to-day elected politics, but the pro-UK parties failed to adapt.
Why not conceive of the state as essentially a regulator and provider of services, dressed up in such odds and ends of holy writ as pass the smell test – one tax base under the NHS and the Equality Act?
“Because all the reforms you guys passed already have panned out really well over the past 20 years, haven’t they.”
The Governor-General de facto fills the role on many a day-to-day basis, whilst the Sovereign serves as an anchor for our democratic system.
Recent polling shows the party well ahead of both the UUP and the TUV, meaning the current deadlock would simply be reproduced.
For years, the ravages of the Scottish Government’s failures have not shown up in the Nationalists’ polling. But the spell has broken.
Hopes for normal, non-sectarian and growth-focused politics have been dashed as rent-seeking hard-liners dominate at Stormont.
Jolyon Maugham’s latest crusade – to make barristers pass political judgement on prospective clients – is a step in a very bad direction; Sir Keir Starmer’s recent appointment of Sue Gray was another.
Every major electoral reform for the past two hundred years has been heralded as the death knell of Toryism. Instead our party adapted – and thrived.
In launching a campaign for a metro mayor, a local businessman (and Labour activist) has said aloud what many Welsh Conservatives seem to think privately.
Out of step on economics, slated for her religious views, and running against the hierarchy’s anointed candidate, she took 48 per cent of the vote.
ConservativeHome’s deputy editor speaks to Michael Portillo about whether or not the events of the past week have made the Union stronger.
Why has the Government signed off a safeguard which Sinn Féin can disable by collapsing Northern Ireland’s devolved institutions again?
Joining the UK would end its status as a dependant territory, and so finally nullify Spanish (and Argentine) arguments based on the UN definition of decolonisation.