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In September, I was invited to take part in an episode of ‘Unfashionably Internationalist’, a podcast about political issues around the world. The series is hosted by Phil Doré, a Green Party campaigner and former national organiser of Wales for Europe. I was invited to speak about the Internal Market Bill, currently making its way through Westminster, and its consequences for Ireland. I was also joined by Neil Schofield-Hughes, a retired civil servant and current chair of Ca

In a recent contribution, Peter Wilson conducted a post-mortem of the 2016 Brexit referendum. From this post-mortem, he suggested a number of lessons that could be learned and applied to a future border poll. Mr Wilson's proposals are very thoughtful and sincere however I feel that a response is necessary. These proposals would have big implications for the conduct of a border poll and would probably prove controversial. To that end, I will briefly revisit the Brexit referend

In most Western democracies, politics is usually defined by the left-right divide or spectrum. Readers in the north of Ireland will know that politics is a little different here, with most parties being pigeonholed along constitutional lines first and traditional left-right lines second (I would argue that these lines are not separate but rather intersect, however that is an article for another day). What readers may not know is that a similar political dynamic exists in the

“All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.” Thus wrote William Butler Yeats in the year 1916. Of course, he was referring to the events of the Easter Rising, although I hope he would forgive me for tentatively applying his words to the recent general election. To say that it was a historic election might be an understatement. The electoral map of Britain has been redrawn. Labour’s once-impenetrable red wall in the north of England crumbled beneath a wave of Tor