The Irish News columnist Patrick Murphy tells many home-truths about the Good Friday Agreement and the Stormont Assembly in Belfast.
This occurs in tandem with declining support for partition within the six-county bit of Ireland. A detonator of this trend was Brexit – the British state’s 2016 right-wing exit from the European Union.
Anti-Partition supporters of the Good Friday Agreement hope its referendum provisions will be enacted – forcing an electoral end on Ireland’s partition. These people need to address an ugly truth : an Irish unity referendum within the 6 county state can only happen with the permission of the British Secretary of State for “Northern Ireland” – an office currently held by Labour MP Hillary Benn.
Benn has categorically stated he will not authorise such a referendum. Credible opinion polls suggest that by the time of the next British general election (which must occur by 2029) the Westminster government could be controlled by the far-right ultra-Unionist Reform party led by Nigel Farage.
The best progressive way to end the partition of Ireland today can start with smashing Stormont.End institutionalised sectarianism and class collaboration – No coalition with right-wing parties such as the Democratic Unionist Party.
The way forward is :
1.Call for the formation of citizens’ assemblies which will draw up a political programme for the creation of a new 32 county Irish state
2. If the Irish state refuses to call a Citizens’ Assembly – something like the body which preceded the 2018 referendum in the 26 county bity of Ireland which repealed the anti-abortion 8th Amendment – the workers’ movement, women’s movement, trade unions, left-wing parties, and so on should take the initiative.
The long life of former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who has passed away at the age of 88, gives us many useful explanations of the state of the left today, not just in France.
Former French prime minister Lionel Jospin: a story of hope and missed opportunities
Jospin lays the ghost of long past Trotskyism – The French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, admitted in 2001 that he began his political career as a Trotskyist
Lara Marlowe, Irish Times Wednesday June 6 2001
The French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, admitted yesterday that he began his political career as a Trotskyist. Mr Jospin responded to questions in the National Assembly following press reports that he was a Trotskyist revolutionary who infiltrated the Socialist party on the instructions of his semi-clandestine organisation.
Newspaper readers who followed reports of a very unusual Gerry Adams London trial were not surprised by its collapse.
Procedurally. for this category of case, there is a 3 year time limit. People injured in three IRA bombings – Old Bailey 1973; Docklands and Manchester 1996 – put Gerry Adams in the dock seeking nominal damages of £1 on the grounds that the former Sinn Féin president had been an IRA leader.
Claimants were well aware of these rules, – they did not have a leg to stand on legally. The only issue was whether Judge Jonathan Swift (yes, same name as the famous Irish satirist who wrote Gulliver’s Travels!) would apply the rules. Judge Swift would have looked a bigger fool than Lemuel Gulliver if he ignored the regulations, and an appeal court later overturned his verdict. [1]
Mark Hennessy contributed this analysis in the March 19 2026 issue of the Irish Times :
This excellent article appeared in the Friday March 20 2026 issue of the Irish Times :
Concerning the differences between the Ukrainian and Russian States, Catriona Crowe hits the nail on the head :
Casualties are breaking down at a ratio of 2-2.5 to 1, with Russia suffering the largest proportion, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. While the international press can report from Ukraine, although with some difficulty and considerable danger from the front lines, the Kremlin has detained at least 27 journalists since 2022, and 355 international journalists have been branded “foreign agents”.
Irish Times March 20 2026
Catriona Crowe: The brave few risking everything to unmask Putin’s Russia
The Oscar-winning documentary Mr Nobody against Putin is a record of something totally unseen in the world outside Russia
Ukraine is now in the fifth year of its war with Russia, an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state based on Vladimir Putin’s desire to reconstitute the Russian Empire. It is estimated that casualties for both sides (killed, wounded and missing) will amount to two million sometime this year.
No accident waiting to happen can ever have delivered on its promise so spectacularly as Lord Mandelson, with the continuous revelations of his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The decision by the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, to appoint Mandelson as ambassador in Washington DC always appeared a high-risk, high-reward strategy. But no reward could ever have repaid such risk.
There is a grim fascination in seeing a prominent public figure’s reputation incinerated in real time. Mandelson’s entreating emails to a convicted abuser and trafficker of minors were still quite recently sufficient of an embarrassment before he was then photographed urinating in public.
The new normal is to appear on front pages in his underpants. Next will come questions about the meaning of emails that appear to show him betraying the most cardinal principles of public office, for monetary gain, from a criminal.
Mandelson had clearly started 2026 with the intention of rehabilitating himself and re-entering public life: a Sunday morning BBC interview, columns in the Spectator, an interview in the Times. Journalists’ requests for comment were replied to. No longer.
What was striking across these appearances – given Mandelson’s talents – was his maladroitness. Not to have apologised to the victims of trafficking when pressed in that initial high-profile interview, only to realise his error and concede the following day did not bear the hallmark of a master of public relations.
Sometimes a table can tell a whole story. Against a wall in Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, an antique console table boasted more than a dozen framed photographs, including some of the world’s most recognisable people. There is a Democratic president and a Republican president, a leftwing intellectual and a rightwing activist firebrand. There are figures from Wall Street, from Silicon Valley and from the British royal family. The pictures even include Mick Jagger, Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul II.
Jeffrey Epstein’s Gallery
Noam Chomsky, Left-Wing Campiist Intellectual, and Jeffrey Epstein
Peter Mandelson, Sacked British Ambassador to the USA, investigated by Brit Cops
Andrew Mountbatter Windsor, Ex-Brit Prince, with a wealthy Saudi Arabia strongman
US far-right activist Steve Bannon with Jeffrey Epstein
While the core of the Epstein saga will always be his web of sexual abusers and the women and girls they preyed on, every new set of messages released by the US justice department reveals the staggering range of his social network and the relationships he was able to sustain. Epstein’s emails read like a self-help group for the 0.01 per cent. How did a college dropout from a working-class family in Brooklyn manage to do it?
Individuals operating within the network created by the late Jeffrey Epstein hired numerous people who threatened media organisations which were investigating a vast child abuse and financial corruption racket. One such individual was the Belfast Lawyer Paul Tweed (see below, a devastating story written by the Belfast Telegraph’s Sam McBride).
Jeffrey Epstein became a convicted criminal in 2008.
Belfast lawyer Paul Tweed and ex-Prince Andrew Mountbatten Windsor
Don’t you dare call Epstein a paedophile:
Inside story of leading NI lawyer’s work to clean up vile billionaire’s image… threatening the media on his behalf
I take this opportunity to recommend this excellent article from Kavita Krishnan which she published in early December. (see below).
Noam Chomsky could afford terrible statements about the systematic mass murders and genocidal wars in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Syria. Even during the Russian mass terror against the Ukrainian people, he raised more understanding of the aggressor than the attacked population.
His support for Epstein reveals the same pattern. The Indian feminist Marxist Kavita Krishnan puts his behaviour into the broader context.
This email from Chomsky to Epstein proves that he wasn’t just giving his friend the benefit of doubt, not knowing the full nature and extent of his crimes. He was actively colluding with Epstein, strategising about how to deal with the revelations about those crimes in the press.
It’s not that Chomsky was incapable of empathy – he was, but he had empathy only for the unfortunate predator, victimised by a journalist who was nuisance enough to put faces and voices to a gaggle of female accusers generating a ‘hysteria’ of solidarity.
What Chomsky calls ‘horrible’ treatment of Epstein by the press, was the November 2018 piece in the Miami Herald, ‘Perversion of Justice’ – Julie Brown’s stellar investigative journalism exposing the secret deal struck a decade ago that betrayed scores of children trafficked and abused by him, who had found the courage to help police build a cast iron case.
This email must go on his tombstone, it must feature in every obituary when he passes, it is not just a stain on his political legacy, it IS integral to his legacy. His collusion with Epstein is a result of the same abstract geopolitical doctrine that passed for his politics, one that allowed him to deny the humanity of victims of horrific mass crimes against humanity – in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Syria, Ukraine, China.
(Edited the post for accuracy, people pointed out he was calling his accusers hysterical, not the girls. He does use hysteria again, to refer to the public response to accusations of abuse of women.)
Organisations linked to former USA Senator George Mitchell are removing the man’s name from their projects :
US-IRELAND ALLIANCE TO REMOVE NAME OF SENATOR GEORGE J. MITCHELL FROM ITS PRESTIGIOUS SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
February 1, 2026. The board of directors of the US-Ireland Alliance has unanimously agreed that its George J. Michell Scholarship program should no longer bear the former Senator’s name. The decision was made due to new information that has come to light as part of the release of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein by the Department of Justice on Friday, according to Trina Vargo, founder and president of the US-Ireland Alliance.
A bust of Mitchell on the grounds of Queen’s University Belfast is gone – from February 2 2026.
The bust of George J Mitchell on the grounds of Queen’s University Belfast has been removed. PICTURE: MAL MCCANN
Credible accusations detailing Mitchell’s alleged Epstein links have been on the public record for more than four years – but the former Senator’s Irish establishment supporters took no action.
Here is an extract from a story published on this blog in January 2022.
A British Tory statement about their former colleague Suella Braverman (and recent government minister) stated she had mental health problems. Some trusting souls may believe party leader Kemi Badenoch and her colleagues sincerely regret that low blow. Possibly, if bad publicity becomes a serious difficulty, a very junior staffer will be blamed and sacrificed. But don’t hold your breath.
Let’s remind ourselves of a similar, and famous, Lyndon Baines Johnson dirty trick which allegedly crushed an election opponent in 1950’s Texas.
“Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested.
“Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that”. “I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the son of a bitch deny it.”
LBJ went on to greater things and became President of the USA in 1963 after John F Kennedy was assassinated.
Very little political substance divides the Badenoch tories and the Nigel Farage reformites.
A correspondent notes “Suella Braverman is clearly a bloody awful figure but (it is) a low blow for the Tory leadership to comment on her mental health.” “The Conservatives did all we could to look after Suella’s mental health” is all a bit “she looks tired.” Braverman is a careerist racist. That’s more than enough to criticise.”
Mainstream British politics is in deep sewers.
This sludge has dangerous implications for Ireland. As things stand now Reform is on course to win the next British general election in 2029.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 