Apologies for the title, but really, seriously, what is it we have now? The Liberal Democrats offered Proportional Representation.  They slumped in the election losing seats, and retained their position as the third party in UK politics. The Labour Party offered a referendum on Alternative Vote PR.  They lost 91 seats. The Conservatives said no [...]

I notice that, finally, consideration is being given to whether the Conservative Party should be fully invested in Northern Ireland, and what sort of interaction there should be between the party and the (inaccurately described) province.  I’ve written about this before, when I was to a large extent agreeing with Jeff Peel (full disclosure – [...]

Tuesday, 26 December 2009 4.15am Castle woken by intrusion alarm, as Lord Alderdice tries to ram-raid his way through the security cordon in a JCB.  Eventually talked down by David Forde, and was immediately tazered by angry PSNI officers.  Eventually claimed that Iain Dale had made him do it.

Monday 25 January, 8.15am Got phone call from Perm Sec’s office, telling me to get to Aldergrove airport and make sure there is no red carpet.  DUP don’t look amused that my tie is green. Apparently thery’ve been up all night practicing the scowl and the ‘never’. 9.30am Apparently they’ve been delayed, and they may [...]

The title should presage a joke, but, to be honest, the impact of the idiot leaders of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom flying to Hillsborough today was nothing short of sickening, as each sought to use the situation in Northern Ireland to deflect attention from their mutually failing regimes each side of [...]

I got a few scoffing emails, mostly from idiots, on my suggestion on Sunday that Arlene Foster could be appointed First Minister in the Northern Ireland Executive. I think this is a good move for a number of good reasons, and for me massively improves the standing of the DUP. First of all, and least [...]

As the probability of Sinn Féin turning the screws on the DUP increases, Northern Ireland Secretary of State Shaun ‘Turncoat’ Woodward is presumably even now ordering his butler to bring him some options to protect Northern Ireland from government collapse. The arithmetic is relatively simple to follow; the DUP is curently the largest party in [...]

This website is primarily about UK politics, and rarely forays into the politics of Ireland.  There’s a simple enough reason for this; the blogger doesn’t feel that there’s a significantly developed school of political thought in Ireland with a fundamentally right-of-centre political principle. I hear lots of people complaining that ‘all the parties in Ireland [...]

I am moved by the lovely and fragrant @sharonashambles on twitter to tell a story about people advising others on how to vote.

UnionistLite comments on his excellent blog that one solution to the troughing of Northern Ireland MPs might be, in part at least, the end of multiple mandate. He’s right, of course; I would extend that one person one mandate principle all the way down to district and borough councils, massively extending the (currently execrable) base [...]