Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

Tom Elliott has freshened up the UUP team at Stormont.  John McCallister is promoted to deputy leader, which will be interpreted as an olive branch to the party’s liberal wing.  He replaces Danny Kennedy, who takes Sir Reg Empey’s portfolio as Minister for Employment and Learning.  The rest of the changes can be viewed here . Although McCallister’s elevation might soothe fears that supporters of Basil McCrea will be ostracised under the new leadership, Elliott has simultaneously filled an executive post with one of his key allies.  Kennedy is an amiable politician, but his performances are often less than stellar. In the aftermath of Lord Browne’s recommendations into university funding and the Northern Ireland specific Stuart Review, the new minister’s in-tray is already full to overflowing.  He faces some exceptionally difficult and potentially unpopular decisions in his first year in office. John McCallister may be the shrewder of the two appointments. ...

The News Letter reports that Danny Kennedy has proposed a motion at the Assembly for local representatives to send their “best wishes” to England in the World Cup. The business committee will decide whether the UUP deputy leader’s proposal is worth debate.  If any common sense is applied, their deliberations won’t take long.  It isn’t. Whatever your view on the vexed question whether to support the English this summer, or not, this is exactly the type of amateur debating society nonsense which gets Stormont a bad name. Kennedy says he will back England in the absence of another home nation in South Africa.  Bully for him.  I’m sure many people here will do likewise, and argue their case at lunch hour or in the pub. The Northern Ireland Assembly, however, doesn’t have a UK wide remit and there is absolutely no need for it to send good wishes to any team at a World Cup, unless Northern Ireland qualify.  No-one in England will know, nor will they care, if ...

In an Assembly debate about north / south bodies yesterday, the UUP’s deputy leader, Danny Kennedy, raised an interesting paradox . Nationalists in general, and the SDLP in particular, have often invoked the Belfast Agreement as if it were infallible and permanent truth. Yet their professed aspiration is to use the accord as a starting point. They aim to gradually integrate Northern Ireland with the Republic. It is a contradictory position which could justify charges of hypocrisy from unionists. After all the accord is consistently cited in order to attack unionist positions on everything from the Bill of Rights to policing and justice. Mr Kennedy: I begin my contribution with a quotation: “all-Ireland arrangements are essential for nationalists who want to share the life of the rest of the island. Those balances are essential for unionism, too, in order that unionism has an agreed relationship with the rest of the people of this island. However, if one begins to pick and choose,...

Danny Kennedy has taken the Republic’s Foreign Minister, Michéal Martin, to task for ‘megaphone diplomacy’ after he intervened in the Bill of Rights debate. In a statement to the Seanad Mr Martin claimed that the proposed bill comprises ‘unfinished work’ and he deemed its implementation a necessary and outstanding part of the Good Friday Agreement. We have revisited the original text many times on this blog and there is little point reproducing it again. The Belfast Agreement established a Commission charged with investigating the possibility of a Human Rights Act, it did not lay down a requirement that any advice should be implemented. In any case, the remit which the Agreement set out was largely ignored in the recommendations which the NIHRC eventually produced. Danny Kennedy argues that the Republic’s government cannot reasonably advocate socio economic rights in Northern Ireland which it would not be prepared to apply to its own jurisdiction. Neither is Martin entitled to ap...

All the main parties in Northern Ireland, other than Sinn Féin, have indicated that the current brand of mandatory coalition at Stormont is not a system which they would choose to operate in the medium to long term. They acknowledge, uniformly, that safeguards must be built into our regional government to ensure that power-sharing is maintained, but there is consensus that the present arrangement lacks accountability, enervates democracy and breeds inefficiency. Problematically, however, with republicans explicitly wedded to carve-up government and the DUP more tacitly so, there is little prospect that the Assembly will feature an official opposition in the foreseeable future. Which leaves the parties, and in particular the two that have taken their positions in the Executive, only to find themselves frozen out of decision making, with the task of reimagining how the existing structures might be better put to work. Although the carve-up coalition partners might be the current benef...

George Osborne and David Cameron have been arguing for months that the government needs to address ballooning national debt and restrict the deficit. And Despite all of Labour’s arch implications that the current Conservative leadership understands nothing about economics, it transpires Alistair Darling is set to announce a budget which seeks to constrain public spending. The last bastion of serious political resistance to the idea that Britain cannot afford to continue a binge of borrowing and spending, as a means to counter recession, appears to have been overcome. Although not, it would seem, in Northern Ireland, where Finance Minister Nigel Dodds clearly believes that if there is any pain to be experienced in the UK, we will be exempt from it. Danny Kennedy, deputy leader of the Ulster Unionists, apparently understands the likely implications of the impending budget. He believes that Northern Ireland will be expected to deliver its share of efficiency savings. He estimates th...

Don’t worry. I don’t intend to replicate O’Neill’s ‘Quote of the Day’ feature. Still, this pithy synopsis is worth reproducing in unvarnished form. Danny Kennedy highlights the carve-up at work . Yesterday, in an ill-tempered display, First Minister Robinson hit out at the UUP, Alliance and SDLP for co-operating on the Financial Assistance Bill. He had the cheek to describe the three parties as an 'unholy alliance' - on the same day as he and his party trooped into the voting lobbies 6 times with their friends in Sinn Fein. 3 democratic political parties co-operating to hold the First Minister and deputy First Minister to account is positive, democratic politics - Messers Robinson and McGuinness clubbing together in a power-grab is truly 'unholy'.

The Conservative and Ulster Unionist parties have appointed members of the Joint Committee which they agreed to form in November, a statement of intent that the new force is set to be progressed early in 2009. From the Conservatives’ press release , their representatives will include, Owen Paterson MP (Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland), Neil Johnston (Conservatives NI Chairman), Jeffrey Peel (Conservatives NI Vice Chairman) and Paul Megarity (Chairman, North Down Conservatives). The Ulster Unionist members will comprise Lord Maginnis, Danny Kennedy MLA, David Campell (UUP Chairman) and Cllr. Mark Cosgrove (UUP Treasurer). The Committee’s task will be to “bring forward proposals on manifesto commitments, branding of joint candidates and candidate selection procedures”. This is hard, practical work required to forge a political alliance which will engage in national politics, but also reflect in its policies the regional peculiarities of Northern Ireland. And although ...

Over at Everything Ulster, Michael Shilliday has highlighted an interesting exchange during yesterday’s Assembly debate on a motion suggesting that in no way could the IRA’s squalid murder campaign be described as a ‘war’. In an answer to a question from Sinn Fein convicted murderer Raymond McCartney, Danny Kennedy commented that he would have no theoretical objection to a united Ireland if the context were the Republic rejoining the Union. Michael commends Kennedy’s statement, seeing in it reclamation of Ulster unionism’s Irish identity. This is a theme which has been discussed on this blog before, both in a lengthy post devoted to the relationship between unionism and the concept of Irishness and more recently, in a post challenging the description of unionism as a form of nationalism, where I highlighted the thoughts which Education Minister Michael McGimpsey brought to the subject. As a civic unionist, my view is that people are free to identify themselves as they wish witho...

The eligibility issue is raised at Stormont this morning in a motion proposed by David McNarry and Danny Kennedy of the Ulster Unionist Party. The debate is a timely reminder that FIFA’s Executive Committee meets this weekend and are likely to formalise a decision on the matter. If the Executive Committee’s decision is along the lines of the proposal FIFA advanced to the two Football Associations, this motion will become especially pertinent. FIFA’s proposal is a shameful abrogation of responsibility which threatens to create football apartheid in Ireland. It is vital that if this proposal is ratified and enforced then the IFA should be given every encouragement from politicians and the public to fight the decision through FIFA’s own appeal process and in courts if necessary. Effective voluntary segregation would be an appalling road to go down, whether on the sports field or in other aspects of life. Yet the twin nationalisms carve-up lends itself to just such a tendency. Misrea...

Predictably i have yet to receive a reply from Edwin Poots as regards the eligibility argument (which I make no apologies for raising ad infinitum on this blog). In contrast Danny Kennedy MLA's response was swift and he has certainly been true to his word advancing this issue robustly and with intent .

Irrelevant, incoherent political whining has paid dividends and having initially indicated that their clear eligibility rules would be applied, FIFA are now attempting wheedle out of their decision and foist an illogical, cowardly fudge to avoid the attentions of ethno-nationalists with no interest in international football beyond their disgraceful political agenda. FIFA have asked the associations for feedback on this deplorable compromise and if Howard Wells and the IFA have a semblance of a spine, they will reject it in no uncertain terms and pledge to defend their position in court if necessary. Wells’ initial reaction to FIFA’s suggestion is encouraging . "(the suggestion is) totally inconsistent with the body's own rules which apply to the other 206 countries in Fifa". "I am extremely surprised about this, to say the least, staggered in fact. "All we are asking is for Fifa to apply their own rules consistently to all members of their organisation. ...