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A new wind blowing in Ireland?
With the return of government to Stormont, and cracks showing in the political edifices of the DUP and Sinn Fein, is the door opening to an all-Ireland politics, asks NICK WRIGHT
Lock padlocks on a set of gates at the steps of Parliament Buildings, Stormont Estate, November 7, 2022

THESE lines are written with a clear view across Co Down to where, as the song has it, the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea. Television viewers might know this delightful port town from the Hope Street series, set in a fictional Ireland far from the reality.

On the southern edge of Donagadee stand two flag poles. One carries an increasingly tattered union flag, the territorial marker of loyalism and the union. The other, an equally bedraggled flag of the Israeli settler state which, no less than the butcher’s apron, tells us much of what we need to know about the loyalist mindset.

The two most unionist-minded newspapers in Ireland, the Belfast Telegraph and the Newsletter, are exemplars of well-thought-out newspaper design and serve their largely partisan readership with a mixture of news and comment perfectly tailored to what is a diminishing proportion of the population in Britain’s oldest colonial possession.

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Starmer sabotaged Labour with his second referendum campaign, mobilising a liberal backlash that sincerely felt progressive ideals were at stake — but the EU was then and is now an entity Britain should have nothing to do with, explains NICK WRIGHT

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Re your message in #nujchapel:  If we website looks like shit, no-one is going to take us seriously, or be inclined to subscribe - that's why I think we have to prioritise the way it looks, especially when the site (editorial-wise) is largely working.  When it comes to the issues you mentioned to me the other day (word count, curly quotes, bylines), there are quick and easy work arounds for them (copy and paste text into BBedit, Word, Pages, wordcount.com, etc. Leave curly quotes, bylines, etc to the web de
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Sinn Fein president Mary Lou
McDonald
Features / 4 December 2024
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Despite plummeting living standards and multiple crises in housing, education and health, another Fianna Fail-Fine Gael coalition approaches after an election with low turnout and no breakthrough for the left, writes NICK WRIGHT