Garvaghy Road: Winning the Street, while Setting Fire to the Argument for a New Ireland… The Orange Order’s right to walk the Garvaghy Road was upheld and loyalism stayed calm, but by following a dissident lead, mainstream nationalism hardened tribal l sluggerotoole.com/2026/10/13…

There is the Middle East war we discuss out here, and there is what happens inside the room. @brett_mcgurk's new book takes us inside the actual room, where it all looks rather different. I interviewed him for @thetimes thetimes.com/world/middle-ea…

Now, the lying is over. Donald is free to be what he always wanted to be and to sing it loudly to the world. He, and by extension the government of the United States of America, is Vladimir Putin’s friend and partner. He will help Putin, protect Putin, and do what he can to get

Drumcree: the first thing to note is that both Sinn Féin and the DUP currently have to dance to the tune set by harder line elements in their own camp. Breandán MacCionnaith, a member of the anti-Agreement party Éirígí, has been giving orders to SF politicians on the Garvaghy Road: and indeed to politicians from the SDLP and the Republic’s political mainstream. Indeed, if any party is at risk of tanking its own political vision, it’s the SDLP – the party most committed to legal proceduralism as a means of settling disputes. In a weekend of political panic, it may have fatally undermined consent for the post-1998 parades permission architecture. One which, let’s remember, delivered real gains for Nationalist communities fed up with unwanted marches, and indeed for members of the Loyal Orders who wanted to celebrate their identity by parading in peace in places where they were actually welcome. In recent years that has included some surprisingly strongly Nationalist towns and villages after local negotiations. But the SDLP has baulked at swallowing an emotionally difficult decision, which also seems to have been procedurally correct and legally watertight, without any thought to long-term consequences. Jamie and the Orange Order engaged with the process respectfully. I agree that an Orange parade down the Garvaghy Road is a bad idea, but what do the SDLP want Loyalists to do? Turn into Nationalists? Sinn Féin, also, are flying politically blind here: very different from the situation in the 1990s, when this was the perfect issue upon which to forge an unarmed strategy of tension. But that was a very different Northern Ireland, and Sinn Féin are no longer upstart outsiders but the party of power at Stormont. On the Unionist side also, neither Jamie Bryson nor the Portadown District Orangemen are under the control of the DUP – quite the reverse, in fact. It is a scandal-hit DUP that must dance to their tune or risk losing even more votes to a TUV that was already surging in the polls. Unionists who are, for want of a better phrase, at the softer end of the hard Right, and always inclined to think that the post-1998 settlement on identity was a one-way ratchet designed to move NI in a more Nationalist direction, have had it confirmed that many Nationalists saw it that way too. Another thing of significance weakens the position of the Orange Order and its allies, however. Nationalists are pretty much universally united against this parade – even people who want a rapprochement with Loyalist Orders wonder why it can’t go down the Corcrain Road like all the other ones; liberal centrists are probably close to universally against it. Unionists, in contrast, aren’t all for it: hence social media is full of comments, including from influencers who aren’t usually very political, saying that ‘I’m a Loyalist but the parade is mad’, or ‘we’ve proved Nationalists are hypocrites, so let’s call the whole thing off’, or ‘Michelle O’Neill is a disgrace but this isn’t worth the trouble it’s going to cause’. It’s notoriously hard to get people to back down from a stand-off in Northern Ireland, but this is one factor that gives me some hope. Another, oddly, is the domineering presence of MacCionnaith on the cameras yesterday. In the days before the smartphone, MacCionnaith could do a lot of dragooning of people behind his studied intransigence behind the scenes. In the 2020s, it will all be on TikTok in minutes and some of his agenda – e.g. no negotiations with the police – simply isn’t tenable for mainstream Republicans when they aren’t in a moment of blind political funk. He is one of the most 1990s elements of this reheated 1990s dispute. Avoiding a lengthy stand-off and political disaster will involve political leaders spending political capital in an election year. The first problem is that the DUP doesn’t have much political capital to spend. The second problem is that this means NI politicians need to want to take risks to solve this dispute. Before Drumcree kicked off, there were plenty of rumours that various factions in different parties had given up on Stormont. If they do, Northern Ireland is entering uncharted territory. There is no appetite for a return to conflict but this is a frozen conflict, not a solved one.

So I’ve been very reluctant to post about this, as it’s deeply personal, but about a week ago I converted to Christianity. I tried very hard to convince myself otherwise, but I kept having this nagging sensation that I couldn’t shake off, like someone was calling my name just out of earshot. I’ve had very complicated feelings about God for as long as I can remember, and have gone back and forth between atheism and a deep anger for years, but for some reason the anger has disappeared. The world is still a mess, and the amount of suffering is still unfathomable, but instead of being angry at God, I’m feeling this…pull instead. Not towards any specific denomination, but towards Christ. I’ve always been the kind of person who needs proof, and while I’ve wanted to believe for a long time, I was never able to get from “I wish there was a loving God” to actually believing in one. I don’t know what’s made the difference; there was no blinding moment of revelation. There’s just this call that I can’t ignore any longer. Every time things get quiet, I feel it tugging at me — gently but implacably. I’ve been reading CS Lewis, and the first four books of the New Testament, and while I have no plans to start going to church, or to change the focus of this account, I’ve stopped trying to convince myself that I’m imagining things. I never expected to feel this way, but I do, and denying it any longer would be wrong.

🇮🇪 Shocking: The Deputy Speaker in Stormont has just shut down debate about what gender identity is again.

Eoin Tennyson said on @bbctalkback that I and @gordonlyons were “misleading” & that detractors “hadn’t read the bill.” I’ve now gone through it. Either Eoin hasn’t read his own bill - or he’s the one being misleading. I’d like an apology.