As of about an hour ago, Prospect is officially on holiday for the next ten days or so, but we have an excellent selection of web exclusives for you to enjoy over the festive season.
- Stephen Chan, who has been following the ANC congress in Polokwane, South Africa, on Jacob Zuma’s victory but Thabo Mbeki’s last triumph. PLUS Former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein has updated his print magazine piece to reflect the latest developments.
- Andrew Jack, the FT’s former man in Moscow, on the prospect of a grand power-sharing deal between Vladmir Putin and his heir presumptive “Dima” Medvedev next year.
- Daria Vaisman, a Tbilisi-based journalist, tries to get to the bottom of Georgian President Saakashvili’s surprise crackdown on the demonstrations in November.
- Sean Swan, replying to Dean Godson, on why internment failed in Northern Ireland
Sean Swan says
“One interesting common feature of the DUP and Sinn Fein is the venom they attract from middle-class commentators and academics. This is something quite distinct from politics and has, I suspect, got a lot to do with the fact that both parties are “closed shops”—they have no point of access for outsiders or the would-be gurus, spin doctors and advisers who have lived vicariously through the UUP and, to a lesser extent, the SDLP.”
Or maybe its because their leaders were “closely associated” with terrorist groups who targeted civilians.
So the electoral success of the DUP and Sinn Fein is due to the fact that “their leaders were “closely associated” with terrorist groups who targeted civilians”? What does this tell us about the majorities in both the nationalist and unionist communities in NI? That they are ‘bad people’? Or that what we are seeing is simply the outworkings of a badly designed political unit in which two antagonistic communities were trapped within borders which exceeded their natural (unionist) community? Winston’s Other Folly?
This is from the Belfast Telegraph of 31 December
“Paisley is now as vital to Northern Ireland as Nelson Mandela has been to South Africa. Like Mandela in Africa, he has become a father figure here, a pivotal influence on whether this country’s experiment in power- sharing can survive.
For that reason, and without question, Ian Richard Kyle Paisley is my Northern Ireland Man of the Year.”