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Faint hearts never won fair ..... er ....... Cameron

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As the moment when the Ulster Unionist and Conservative parties must reveal the detail of their new relationship draws closer, perhaps some of those in the smaller party can be forgiven the odd wobble of resolve . With the modalities as yet unclear, and the stakes for the UUP undoubtedly higher, it is natural for party members to wonder whether the course their leader has set is the correct one. If, to extend the Politics Show’s rather laborious metaphor, Empey and Cameron are on the cusp of political marriage (an interesting image I grant you), there were always bound to be some pre-wedding nerves. With the Conservative party conference commencing yesterday, commentators have begun to reflect some of this last minute anxiety, particularly as theory is put into practice and the Tories and UUP begin to sound like one party. Lord Trimble rounded off the conference’s first day by rallying his Conservative colleagues to contest every seat in the UK. This explicit statement of inten...
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Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

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The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retaine...
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Guest Post: Leave our Alain alone

By itwassammymcnallywhatdoneit As we know well in Northern Ireland, predicting someone’s views on a range of issues doesn't require a crystal ball, just a clue as to their background - their name, the school they attended or their address. Once you have sniffed out those details, you can identify their tribe and you can then have a fair stab at working out what they think. Of course, tribalism is not just confined to Ulster and tribal loyalties are not always that straightforward. Take Monsieur Alain Rolland for example, born and raised in Ireland but with a French father. For many Welsh rugby fans such continental lineage was proof positive of his preference for the land of his father, Wales's opponents in the rugby world cup semi-final and of course explains his 'outrageous' decision to send off the Welsh captain Sam Warburton. When England were knocked out of the world cup, by perhaps the bitterest of their many 'old enemies' France, Wales found the...
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