Jude Collins

Ah yes, nothing says “peace and stability” quite like a robust annual shopping spree in the global arms aisle. Let’s begin with the ever-modest USA. In 2024, it spent roughly a cool $997 billion on defence. Just a whisker under a trillion. Pocket change, really. That’s not a military budget; that’s a Marvel Cinematic Universe budget […]

It is perfectly possible to like George Mitchell. It is also perfectly possible not to. Neither sentiment has the slightest bearing on whether he was effective    George  Mitchell did not broker the Good Friday Agreement because he was cuddly, avuncular or possessed of a disarming Maine accent. He succeeded because he was patient to […]

For years in polite Irish discourse, the word “socialism” has been handled the way one might handle an unexploded device: carefully, nervously, and preferably with gloves. It was the term Michael McDowell liked to reach for when he wanted to suggest fiscal recklessness, Venezuelan grocery shelves, and a sudden shortage of sensible shoes. “Socialism,” in […]

Fintan O’Toole, rummaging industriously through the moral attic of history, has emerged clutching the Spanish Civil War and waving it accusingly at modern Sinn Féin. In his telling, there is something faintly scandalous about the fact that a movement which once supported republicans fighting fascism in Spain now hesitates to vote billions into the welcoming […]

Casement Park, to the GAA, is a stadium. To the DUP and TUV, it is a looming cultural megastructure, a sort of Celtic Death Star capable of firing beams of Gaelic at unsuspecting suburbs. Here are five things they particularly hate about it: 1. Its existence in Belfast If Casement Park were located somewhere safely […]

St Patrick’s Day in Washington is that magical time of year when Irish politicians fly 3,000 miles to hand over a bowl of vegetation and call it diplomacy. It’s a ritual combining horticulture, geopolitics, and faintly disguised lobbying. Everyone smiles, everyone wears green, and everyone pretends this is perfectly normal behaviour for adults. Traditionally, the […]

The Facebook page of the Official Protestant Coalition reacted to the PSNI announcement with the digital equivalent of dropping a tray of teacups. The PSNI, in a moment of administrative daring, had declared it would deal with all unauthorised flag flying equally. All flags. The word “all” hung in the air like an unexpected bill. […]

  Is the South of Ireland ‘a bunch of freeloaders’ because they won’t cough up military money and protect itself (and Britain, of course) from possible assault from Russia?     Gordon Lyons says benefit fraud is a moral as well as a financial matter. We compare the figures for benefit fraud with those for tax […]

Prince Andrew has always been less a man and more a cautionary bookmark left in the pages of a fading institution. His recent public re-emergence—blinking awkwardly in the light like a chandelier that has somehow learned to sweat—has done the monarchy an unintended favour. He has reminded everyone what royalty looks like when stripped of […]

The United States has always liked to think of itself as the world’s head prefect: striding down the global corridor, straightening ties, confiscating contraband, and occasionally throwing smaller nations against the lockers “for their own good.” Venezuela and Cuba are merely the latest pupils summoned to detention. In Venezuela, Washington has gone far beyond tut-tutting. […]