Elections North and South

national | worker & community struggles and protests | other press Friday June 01, 2007 13:54 by John McAnulty - socialistdemocracy

The New Stormont regime in the North of Ireland
“And this is hell, nor am I out of it”

John McAnulty

A local cartoonist, Ian Knox, summed up the May 8th re-opening of the Stormont executive in the North of Ireland as the coronation of the sectarian bigot Ian Paisley,

The New Stormont regime in the North of Ireland

'and this is hell, nor am I out of it'

A local cartoonist, Ian Knox, summed up the May 8th re-opening of the Stormont executive in the North of Ireland as the coronation of the sectarian bigot Ian Paisley, representing Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein as his consort. It was a deadly accurate satire. Tony Blair and Taoiseacht Bertie Ahern led a deputation of B-list politicos from Europe and the US to the coronation, each outdoing the other in the use of cliché. The media played their part too, adopting the reverential terms reserved for royal weddings to describe the marriage of the loyalist DUP and the former republican movement, and supplying about the same level of analysis. Only the bravest reporters had the nerve to remind us that the same experiment had been tried 9 years before, with a great deal more support and in much more auspicious circumstances.

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