Ira

Hats off to John McDonnell. We’ve all been fretting about how the Corbyn gang would cope against the media slick Tories. We all think that, despite the appeal of conviction politics, a shadow chancellor such as McDonnell will be eaten alive by the Tory front bench. John McDonnell’s performance on BBC Question Time last night suggested otherwise. Question Time is a good test for politicians: they have to look and sound passionate while saying nothing much at all. McDonnell did exactly that, and with gusto. He masterfully shrugged off his ‘joke’ about killing Margaret Thatcher. When asked about his support for the IRA, he managed almost simultaneously to apologise and to

The political crisis in Northern Ireland has just become much more serious. Peter Robinson has stepped down as first minister and pulled all but one DUP Minister out of the executive. This means that there is now just one Unionist as part of the government there. Robinson’s aim is to make the UK government suspend Stormont. This crisis has been caused by the IRA’s continuing activities. Last month, the Police Service of Northern Ireland declared that the Provisional IRA was involved in the murder of Kevin McGuigan. This week, Sinn Fein’s northern chairman Bobby Storey was one of three republicans arrested for questioning in connection with the matter. Now, Sinn

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Willie Horton and Michael Dukakis. That’s what Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to prominence will do to a fellow. Horton, you will remember, was the convicted murderer who never returned from a weekend furlough granted to him while Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts, and subsequently kidnapped a couple in Maryland, stabbing the husband and repeatedly raping the wife. He became the star of George Bush’s 1988 presidential election campaign. Lee Atwater, Bush’s most pugnacious strategist, had vowed to “strip the bark” from Dukakis and promised that “by the time we’re finished they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running-mate”.  The Willie Horton ads were ugly – there

The Labour party includes many sensible and intelligent people who want what is best for our country.  But all of them are currently gnawing their hands and weeping into their sleeves as they watch their party prepare to take this great leap backwards.  I know of Labour politicians who hoped that putting Jeremy Corbyn up for the leadership would shine a light on him and his ilk and thus chase out for ever the IRA/Hezbollah wing of their party.  Alas for them the infection turned out to be what the body most welcomed, and so here the sensible members of the party sit, sadly mulling their electoral mortality. In such

Thanks to Guido Fawkes, I learn that the left-wing author Owen Jones has just appeared at the Sinn Fein summer school in Ireland.  According to Sinn Fein’s own newspaper, Owen used the opportunity to praise Sinn Fein’s ‘progressive’ politics, suggest that people take inspiration from the 1916 Easter Rising and announce what a ‘passionate believer’ he apparently is in a united Ireland. There are a number of interesting things about this.  The first is that it exposes what a sham the far-left’s attitude towards political violence really is. Owen isn’t the first person of his ilk to have supported Sinn Fein.  For decades there has been a dirty line-up of far-left figures

Jeremy Corbyn just can’t help making friends wherever he goes. He previously described Hamas operatives as ‘friends’ and now he has found time out of his Labour leadership campaign to meet up with his old ‘comrade’ Gerry Adams in Portcullis House. The Sinn Féin president has tweeted a picture of their meet up, which Martin McGuinness also attended: With Jeremy Corbyn & the comrades @ Portcullis House, Westminster. pic.twitter.com/A6Vgmaglsa — Gerry Adams (@GerryAdamsSF) July 21, 2015 Of course the pair go way back. Corbyn, who supported ending British status for Northern Ireland, was heavily crtiticised after he invited Adams — along with other Sinn Féin members — to the House of Commons

A Tory MP called Brian Binley has written an article suggesting that plain cigarette packs – which the House of Commons voted for yesterday – will help Isis. His argument is superficially plausible but fundamentally bonkers. In other words, it’s a conspiracy theory. Here are the dots that Binley has joined. There’s truth in all of these points. • Terrorists have made money out of tobacco smuggling. Though Binley only gives us chapter and verse on the IRA, operating in the ‘bandit country’ of Northern Ireland. • ‘Gangs and terror groups’ who smuggle tobacco and alcohol also smuggle ‘drugs, arms and people’. True. Some detail would have been nice, though. • ‘Data

Jonathan Powell seems to be unavoidable at the moment. Having read his first two books a couple of times I felt a weary sense of resignation on news of the third. It wasn’t until I saw and heard him on channel 4 news that I felt serious irritation. We, whoever ‘we’ may be, should talk with everyone, everywhere, at any time, because we always do anyway – pretty much summed it up. Words are important – the more so when they are delivered by Tony Blair’s former chief of staff, who is much credited  with making a serious contribution to the Belfast Agreement. Jonathan Powell is a serious man, although

Jonathan Powell is a British diplomat who served as Tony Blair’s chief of staff from 1997 to 2007. During this period, he was also Britain’s chief negotiator for Northern Ireland. These days, Powell runs a charity called Inter Mediate, which works as a go-between among terrorist organizations and governments around the globe. David Cameron appointed him last May as the UK’s special envoy to Libya. His book ‘Talking to Terrorists’ was published this month, a review of which can be found in the October 4 edition of The Spectator. In it, Powell argues the British government has failed to learn lessons from the history of diplomacy with guerrilla groups. I met with

The Hallett Review was published yesterday. This is the review ordered by the Prime Minister in February after the collapse of the trial of John Downey. Readers will remember that Downey was about to face trial over the 1982 Hyde Park bombing – in which four British soldiers were murdered – when his lawyers produced a letter from the Police Service of Northern Ireland saying that Downey was not being sought for any offences. This opened up the remarkable discovery that unbeknown to most people involved in the political process in Northern Ireland: that such ‘amnesty letters’ had been sent to almost 200 ‘on-the-runs’ (people being sought for terrorism offences