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Christopher Owens ðŸ”–“We hang around with people I know, people I went to school with, family, lovers, fans, philanthropists, poets, scholars and wasters. We’re from Pandemonia and that’s where we’re going to remain.”


So said Pete Doherty whenever his band The Libertines first made it onto the cover of NME in June 2002. The humble bragging and pseudo-intellectualism radiating from that quote is one of the many reasons why so many took to the band. And who could blame them?

With the 25th anniversary of punk in the air, the recent arrival of the Strokes in Britain and eclectic nightclubs like London's Trash and Glasgow's Optimo helping to shape the tastes of a generation, it was evident that something was brewing. Something that was utterly of the moment but was perfect for the retroculture that became the 00's.

As well as this, the ramifications of Napster and illegal downloading had left the traditional record business in a state of flux but had allowed bands to build fanbases by connecting with likeminded people online before the introduction of MySpace changed the game altogether. Speaking in 2014, Johnny Borrell (Razorlight) described the shift:

This whole period . . . was a fucking revolution for A&R. Back in the day, A&R meant going out to gigs and watching bands, but in this era, it became sitting at your computer trawling Myspace, then Facebook and YouTube, for the freshest, youngest thing going. Bands weren’t allowed to develop on their own before they were swept up in the machine . . .  And it wasn’t just the labels . . . what we all witnessed over this era was many magazines and radio programmers switching from having an actual editorial perspective, to being run as focus groups for companies to shift products to 16-24 year olds. And I mean that very literally: groups of kids in a room being played demos to see which they liked most, in order to boost advertising from Motorola or whatever.

Proof that Reginald C. Dennis was correct: the industry is like the Borg in Star Trek as it adapts, consumes and sets the agenda.

Whether I liked it or not, this music helped shape my formative years (14 in 2000 and 24 in 2010) and to see it now be the subject of retrospectives about ‘indie sleaze’ (a term no-one used at all in this time period) is more than a little disconcerting. However, there is no doubt that it is an interesting period to look back on. Not just from the tech aspect but also from a cultural and historical perspective.

Cards on the table here, very few of the bands in here did anything for me (the sole exception being Franz Ferdinand who were something else entirely). Regardless, a music book can still be great even if one has no interest in the bands covered.

So Janine Warren deserves kudos for interviewing some of the illuminati from that scene (The Libertines, Bloc Party, The Futureheads, Maximo Park, The Long Blondes) and ensuring that their stories aren’t relegated to beer-soaked memories but are placed in the proper context.

The most interesting chapters revolve around sexism in the industry, the epoch defining success of the Arctic Monkeys, the increasing corporatisation of the scene and the ghoulish following that Pete Doherty attracted (increasing tenfold when Kate Moss showed up). While some of the quotes have a strong whiff of revisionism about them (I highly doubt Paul Smith from Maximo Park genuinely thought in 2005 that leaving pronouns out of his lyrics would make them more inclusive) and other quotes are telling inditements on what effect an elitist mindset has on you (Alex Kapranos dismissing Web 2.0 as your racist granny having a Facebook account), the participants offer up sobering recollections of those times and question their own complicity in how things turned out.

Whether one agrees with them or not, it is nice that there’s no room for mythology and that, having been in the eye of a diminishing storm (end of traditional record sales) as well as being engulfed by a larger one (tour, tour, tour), there is some clear-headed perspective and a willingness to admit to faults.

One thing that did interest me was just how little discussion there is of September 11th and 7th July as well as there being no mention of the Jean Charles de Menzes killing. For me, these are seismic events which have shaped modern Britain in ways which we’re still coming to terms with over two decades on. And yet, with the ham-fisted exception of the Rakes (whom the title of this book comes from), very few tried to tackle the events head on and if they did it was fed into a general malaise about modern life and the rat race, thereby reducing these historical events to matters of personal psychology.

Regardless, this is an entertaining and considered book that attempts to wrestle the ‘indie sleaze/landfill indie’ tags away from a scene that was derided for years. While it certainly doesn’t make me want to reappraise The Duke Spirit or White Rose Movement, it did entertain me and left me thinking that it wasn’t the worst time in the world.

Janine Warren, 2026, The World Was a Mess But His Hair Was Perfect: The Last Indie Music Scene 2000-2010. Omnibus Press. ISBN-13: 978-1915841261


⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect 📚 The Last Indie Music Scene 2000-2010

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Eighty Nine

 

Religious Derangement Syndrome @ 15

 

A Morning Thought @ 3261

Frankie McKillen ⚽ It's Sunday 9th August 2026 and I am having a beer and a spliff and I decided to ask Chatgpt who it thinks will win the EPL this season.

Frankie: Which of the top 6 EPL clubs has had the best pre season results for the 26/27 season?

Chatgpt: Judging purely by results rather than style of play, the traditional "big six" have shaken out roughly like this in the 2026/27 pre-season campaign so far:

Club                  Games         Points*                                   Verdict

Man United        6                  16                  Best overall record

Arsenal                5                  12                  Strong, despite a couple of stumbles

Man City              4                  12                  Very efficient, unbeaten for most of the summer

Tottenham          5                 ~10                 Solid rather than spectacular

Liverpool              5                  ~8                 Good attacking signs, but inconsistent

Chelsea               5                  ~7                   Entertaining, but rather chaotic


*Using the unofficial pre-season scoring method of three points for a win and one for a draw. Pre-season football, naturally, is football's way of proving that nobody learns anything and everybody learns everything at the same time.

A few notable results

Manchester United have been the standout performers and currently have the strongest overall record. Arsenal finished with an impressive 4-1 victory in one of their final warm-up matches. Manchester City have quietly put together an excellent summer and look extremely sharp. Liverpool lost 3-2 to Monaco in their latest outing after leading 2-1. Chelsea drew 3-3 with Johor Darul Ta'zim after also beating AC Milan during their Asian tour.

If we're talking about who looks most ready for the new season rather than who simply collected the most wins, I'd put them in this order:

Manchester United

Manchester City

Arsenal

Liverpool

Tottenham

Chelsea

Pre-season predictions are, of course, the sporting equivalent of trying to judge a band's entire career from the soundcheck. Humans remain remarkably committed to this tradition.

Frankie: Who looks the most complete as a team?

Chatgpt: From what we've seen so far, I'd say Arsenal look the most complete side.

Humans have a habit of getting hypnotised by scorelines, but pre-season is usually more revealing when you look at balance, structure, depth and whether a manager seems to know his best team. Arsenal tick almost every box.

My ranking would be:

1. Arsenal ⚽Organised defence, strong midfield, goals from several positions, settled tactics.

2. Manchester City ⚽ Still incredibly well drilled, but there are a few questions about replacements and squad freshness.

3. Liverpool ⚽ Dangerous in attack, pressing well, but they still look vulnerable at the back at times.

4. Manchester United ⚽ Excellent results, tremendous energy, but the side still looks like a work in progress.

5. Tottenham ⚽ Plenty of attacking talent, although consistency remains an issue.

6. Chelsea⚽ Enormous talent, limited stability. Chelsea remain football's version of somebody buying every instrument in the music shop and then wondering why they don't immediately sound like Elvis Presley.

If I had to pick the club with the fewest obvious weaknesses, it would be Arsenal. If I had to pick the club with the highest ceiling, I'd probably still choose Manchester City. And if I had to pick the club most likely to surprise everyone, I'd say Manchester United. Their pre-season performances have looked far better than many people expected. 

Frankie: Where would you place Man Utd, Liverpool and Chelsea?

Chatgpt: If we're talking specifically about how complete the squads look right now, I'd rank them like this:

Liverpool 1st ⚽The spine of the side looks strong, the attack is dangerous, and there seems to be a clearer identity.

Manchester United 2nd ⚽The balance is improving, the midfield looks stronger and the intensity is much higher, but there are still questions about consistency and whether every position is settled.

Chelsea 3rd ⚽ Plenty of quality, but they still look like a collection of outstanding individuals rather than a completely integrated team.

Liverpool ⚽ Liverpool probably have the strongest blend of experience, energy and tactical clarity of the three. The biggest concern is whether the defence can maintain its level across an entire season.

Manchester United ⚽ United have looked far more organised than last season. Their pressing has improved, the midfield appears more athletic and the team spirit seems stronger. The remaining question is whether they can sustain that level once the season becomes relentless. Football clubs are strange institutions. Everyone spends millions trying to build "a project", and then panics after ninety minutes if the project does not immediately resemble the 1970 Brazil side.

Chelsea ⚽ Chelsea still have the highest level of uncertainty. Their ceiling is extremely high, but so is the risk of inconsistency. On their day, they can look outstanding. Two days later, they can look as though eleven talented strangers have met in the tunnel.

Out of those three alone, I'd place them in this order:

Liverpool

Manchester United

Chelsea

That said, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if United finished above Liverpool by May. Pre-season form is a wonderfully unreliable narrator.

Frankie: Now how do you think the top 6 will finish

Chatgpt:  If I had to predict the 2026/27 Premier League top six right now, I'd go with this:

1. Liverpool are my tentative favourites. They have experience, goals, pace and, most importantly, a very clear identity. Winning the league is usually less about producing moments of brilliance and more about relentlessly collecting points on cold Wednesday nights when everyone would rather be at home eating toast.

2. Arsenal look exceptionally balanced. Their defence is probably the best in the league, but I still wonder whether they'll score enough goals in the biggest matches.

3. Manchester City third feels slightly ridiculous because they could easily finish first. Writing off a Pep Guardiola side is a bit like announcing that gravity has been cancelled. Even so, there are more questions than usual surrounding the squad.

4. Manchester United are my dark horse. Their pre-season has been excellent, the energy looks different, and the squad appears far more united. The biggest challenge will be consistency.

5. Chelsea possess enough talent to finish anywhere between second and eighth. Nobody embodies modern football better than Chelsea: an endless supply of gifted players, enormous spending and millions of supporters trying to convince themselves that this time everything makes perfect sense.

6.Tottenham have quality, but I don't think they are as complete as the teams above them.

My prediction for the actual title race would be:

Liverpool: 85 points

Arsenal: 83 points

Manchester City: 81 points

Manchester United: 77 points

Chelsea: 70 points

Tottenham: 67 points

I also have a feeling that Newcastle might push one of those six all the way. They look far too strong to ignore.
 


🕮 Frankie McKillen is a Belfast Rockabilly

English Premier League Predictions

Dixie Elliot ✊As always it was a pleasure to share the company of Republicans who come together in memory of all those who died on hunger strike.


There wasn't a whiff of hypocrisy in the air as we remembered that they had died for, a 32-County Socialist Republic and nothing less. That they most certainly did not die to pave the way for electoralism or the acceptance of an agreement which had been on the table since 1973, and which the British had repackaged as the GFA. An agreement which also contained the vague promise of a referendum on Irish Unity.

At the time when those ten brave men, along with their female comrades in Armagh Gaol, first wrapped a blanket round their naked bodies and endured over four years of being degraded and beaten by the jailers of the British Crown. And at the time when they were forced to take the only road left open to them; the hunger strike, that agreement was seen by them and indeed all Republicans as something only Gerry Fitt and the SDLP would accept.

At the time of their deaths the Republican Movement was totally opposed to the idea of taking part in electoral politics, even though a tiny few secretly planned to take it in that direction.

On the way to the Independent Republican commemoration in Dublin's Garden of Remembrance, Cypie and I stopped off at Glasnevin Cemetery to search for the graves of those brave men and women who had fought to achieve the dream of an Irish Republic.


We weren't interested in finding the graves of De Valera, nor Collins, nor indeed Arthur Griffth. But at each of the graves we did find, those of Kevin Barry, Roger Casement, Nurse Elizabeth O’Farrell, Cathal Brugha, Maud Gonne, The O'Rahilly and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, we were shocked to see that their names had faded on their headstones.

We could sense the ghosts of history as we both stood at the graveside of O'Donovan Rossa, at the very spot where Patrick Pearse had given his famous oration, both in English and in Irish, where he had said the immortal words:

the fools, the fools, the fools! – they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.

But we could barely read the name of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa on his headstone and we had difficulty making out the names of all the Irish hunger strikers, including the ten brave men in the H-Blocks, who had died for Irish freedom, on the monument erected in their memory.

This is history telling us that not only are the names of our patriot dead fading on their headstones and monuments but they are also fading in the minds of many Irish people and so too is the cause they fought and died for. History is being rewritten to suit the narrative of those who betrayed the countless generations who dreamed of Irish freedom and who fought for Irish freedom but never lived to see it become a reality.

They use the names of the dead to sell the betrayal of everything they died for, safe in the knowledge that the dead can't contradict them.

But as Republicans we can contradict them. We can expose their lies and we must do it every time one of them claims to be remembering the dead, but are in fact using their memory in their own self-interest, to sell the promise of a victory that never comes about, no matter how many years drag by.

The Independent Republicans - National Commemoration Committee who held yesterday's Hunger Strike commemoration should be recognised for the work they put into it.

As too must the main speaker Armagh Republican and former Blanket Man, Eugene 'Gene' Byrne and life long Republican Patrick Burke who chaired the commemoration.


So too the Colour Party and the bands.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Fading

Caoimhin O’Muraile ☭ Back 1982 the British Prime Minister, the far-right Margaret Thatcher, was in serious political trouble. 

She needed something of a spectacular to kneejerk her political future and this was to be provided by the equally troubled Argentinian President, Leopoldo Galtieri, who was also in the realms of perdition himself. Both these far-right leaders shared much political ideologies, hatred of trade unions or any working-class resistance to the bosses, hatred of democracy and an entrenched detestation of socialism. They were both also fond of getting their own way. Galtieri could get away with much Thatcher wished she could do simply because Argentina did not have the checks and balances afforded the parliamentary politics in Britain.

Thatcher’s real position, had she been able to get away with it, was highlighted when in 1990 she was booted out of office! What she would have given for the Argentine dictator’s powers at that time can only be guessed. In 1982 Galtieri ordered Argentine troops to land on the “Malvinas” with a view to taking them back for Argentina. He needed something big to draw attention away from himself and his abysmal political record in Buenos Aires and the torture of trade unionists and other opposition parties and individuals. Wives and mothers wanted to know where their husbands and sons had disappeared to? The blood-letting brought about by both these neo-fascist leaders could and should have been avoided. On 2nd April 1982 Operation Rosario, the Argentine landings on the islands, began.

For several weeks a Royal Naval presence was in the South Atlantic in the form of HMS Endurance, an ice breaking vessel which had been sending urgent messages back to London regarding Argentinian troop activity on and around the island of South Georgia. This, the vessel advised, was in all probability the prelude to something much bigger, which it was. Argentina’s army landed on the “Malvinas” proper on 2nd April 1982. Had the warnings from the Icebreaker been heeded Thatcher could, if she so wished, have garrisoned the islands which would no doubt have been sufficient to deter the Argentine conscripts. She did not do this, even though the presence of natural resources (chiefly oil) was known to be lying in the surrounding coastal waters, because she needed blood and guts to be spilled on the beaches and streets of Port Stanley. 

At the time in Britain Thatcher was having problems with the train driver’s union, ASLEF, who were out on strike. Anti-Thatcher demonstrations were common and what better way to deflect attention from herself than by giving people the old ‘national pride’ to get drunk on. Wrap the union flag around yourselves was the message from the Conservative and Unionist prime Minister. In Buenos Aires anti-government feelings were high and demonstrations, those the government could not shoot off the streets, took place. Both these leaders were in shit street and what better way out, at least for one of them, than the oldest con-trick in the book, nationalism and national pride!

Britain has claimed sovereignty over the islands since in 1833 basing this claim on the landing in 1690 of Captain John Strong. Throughout the 18th century Britain garrisoned the islands for the British Monarch and since 1833 have claimed sovereignty. Previously in 1765 they established their first settlement and claimed the archipelago. When in 1774 due to economic pressure Britain withdrew its garrison the departing troops left behind a plaque informing would be ‘usurpers’ the islands “remained the property of King George III”. Both countries have equally dubious claims on the islands and, more appropriately, the mineral wealth in the surrounding waters which is what it is really all about. 

Britain hides behind the fact the islanders wish to remain British, islanders nobody knew existed prior to 1982, and islanders who do not even get a vote in British elections. They are equal British citizens who, unlike other equal British citizens, do not get a vote in what little democracy exists. Argentina’s claim relies heavily on geographical location, 200 miles from Buenos Aires, 8,000 miles from London. They have a point: imagine if the Argentines claimed sovereignty over the Isle of Man? Both counties have equally dubious claims on these pieces of rock in the South Atlantic and both claims are smokescreens which their respective ruling-classes hide their real intentions behind. Prior to the first British settlement in 1765 the French had a small colony present so maybe they might yet kick a claim in once the level of natural resources, chiefly oil, have been fully discovered. 

In 1982 Thatcher must have been rubbing her hands with glee when she ordered a ‘Task Force’ to be assembled to retake the islands from the ‘Argentine invaders’. The British forces were successful in their quest, the elite Para-troop regiment (who also murdered Irish civilians) and the SAS were pitted against Argentinian sixteen-year-old conscripts barely out of school. The total cost in Thatcher and Galtieri’s war was 904 - 255 British and 649 Argentinian - with 3 civilians losing their lives. Thatcher’s bloodbath did not persuade ASLEF to drop their claim and return to work but outside the sensible Ray Buckton, the union's General Secretary at the time, the gullible people of Britain wrapped the ‘Butchers Apron’ (Union Jack) around themselves and celebrated the deaths of so many young people needlessly apart from saving Thatcher. Longer term, of course, the oil was the target but in the short run Thatcher’s premiership was saved.

Today 44 years after the conflict Argentine President Javier Milei is making nationalistic noises again about sovereignty over the “Malvinas”. Oddly enough this so-called ‘Libertarian Conservative’ right-wing President is in a bit of trouble economically and politically. Typically he has resurrected the ghost of the “Malvinas” in an attempt to save his fortunes. British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham has, it would appear, no such problems. President Milei has stated again “Falkland Islands are Argentinian” and at the recent World Cup semi-final Argentina, after defeating England 2-1, flew a provocative banner declaring “Las Malvinas sol Argentina”. 

These claims come at a time when US president, Donald Trump, has shifted the USA position regarding their neutrality over the “Falkland Islands”. This changed position by Trump is seen by many as his vindictive revenge for Britain’s at best tepid support for his illegal war against Iran. Could Trump be privately encouraging Argentina to land troops on the islands in another effort to reclaim sovereignty so he can tell Britain to fuck off should they ask for US support? In the infantile mind of the US President this would massage his ego after former British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, refusing to support him against Iran. Should the Argentines land once again on the islands with tacit US agreement what would British PM, Andy Burnham’s, response be? The Argentine leader has not yet indicated such a landing but he has threatened “sanctions” against any companies exploiting the coastal waters off the archipelago for oil. These, he reportedly claims, are Argentine waters and any exploration by Britain would be an incursion into Argentine territory. As ‘international law’ no longer exists, courtesy of Trump, Netanyahu, Putin, and Zelensky, who’s is right and wrong is difficult to dictate even under the warped conditions of capitalism. Irrespective of any complications regarding sovereignty a joint British/Israeli operation to exploit the mineral wealth is planned to begin in 2028. President Milei has stated; “any further advances on the Malvinas Islands will be considered a violation of our national security”. Roughly translated what he is claiming is such an operation would be considered an act of war.

The resurrection of the Falklands/Malvinas question by Argentina on such a grand scale on the back of the changing position adopted by the USA is probably no coincidence. For decades the US have remained neutral on the competing claims of Argentina and Britain while de-facto recognising Britain’s administration of the islands. Trump has suggested he “would not back the UK in a fight over the Falklands” and pointed to the lack of support afforded him for his war on Iran. President Milei would be an easy ally for the US to control in the area and put bluntly the US bourgeoisie would go some distance in securing the as yet untapped oil wealth in the seas without firing a shot! Milei is by some distance Trump's closest ally in South America and encouraging him over the islands could well serve the US president's flagging ratings while giving him a puppet in the region. 

Various British administrations, with the exception of Harold Wilson in the 1960s, have licked the arse of the US since the Second World War and their response to that country’s change in policy towards the “Falkland Islands” will be interesting. Will Burnham, should an Argentine landing happen, follow in Thatcher’s footsteps? Will another bloodbath over a couple of pieces of rock whose inhabitants are mocked in many British pubs about having sexual relationships with ‘sheep’ take place? Will Argentine and British young lives be sacrificed for the oil wealth the riches of which will be benefited by a few greedy capitalists, irrespective of which country? 

The situation in the South Atlantic will be worth monitoring but given the other global conflicts and bloodbaths occurring, Palestinian/Israeli, Russia/Ukraine, and US/Iran may at the moment not be considered paramount. This being the case it must be remembered the situation between Argentina and Britain is, and has been for centuries, volatile and could blow up any moment over the Falkland/Malvinas Islands.

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Falkland/Malvinas Islands –🪶Another Twist?

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Eighty Eight

 

A Morning Thought @ 3260

Jim Duffy ✍ The Irish have a very timid understanding of security and defence and governments are easily intimidated by fanatical devotees of neutrality and their reducing of every debate to pointless chants.


RTÉ is the same. Just look at the mass coverage the station gives to Paul Murphy when Murphy demonstrates a spectacular lack of basic understanding on the topic. In an article earlier this week RTE gave Murphy one third of the article in comments despite demonstrably not knowing what he is talking about.
 
Why is PBP given so much disproportionate coverage in general on RTÉ? It is on 3% in polls. It lost a seat on the general election, yet RTE pretty much gives it equal coverage with SF despite SF being seven times more popular than PBP. It gets more coverage than all the bigger parties in opposition. 

I know there is a history of political bias in RTÉ, as when RTÉ current affairs was basically a branch of the Workers Party. Now it appears to be a branch of PBP, with Paul Murphy and Richard Boyd Barrett pretty much having guaranteed seats in any debate, with Labour, Independent Ireland, Aontú and the Social Democrats struggling to get one invitation occasionally.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

It Needs To, But Will It?

Friendly Atheist ★ Video showed an ordinary high school wrestling match and prosecutors found no provable crime—but two Puyallup educators are now accused of waiting too long to report it.

There’s a disappointing but predictable update to a story I first wrote about in June.

In short, high school wrestler Kallie Keeler, of Rogers High School in the Puyallup School District in Washington, claimed she had been sexually assaulted during a competitive wrestling match by an opponent she later learned was transgender . . . even though video of the match suggested nothing criminal occurred. 

Experts I spoke to also said the allegation she was making were the kinds of things that happen in wrestling matches all the time. (In a sport with fast-moving hands, athletes are occasionally and accidentally touched in inappropriate places! This was nothing more, they said, than a couple of amateur high school wrestlers pulling off a couple of sloppy moves.)

The fact that the video showed nothing outside the regular scope of a match is, in fact, why no charges were ultimately filed. The Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association took no action. And the Pierce County prosecutors chose not to file criminal charges in the incident . . . 

School Officials Face Charges After Trans Wrestler Controversy Fueled By The Religious Right

Louth For Ever ★ writing in Medium on  3-September-2026.

The gate is shut from outside and the door is held from inside. Everything else is commentary, including this.

Photo by Paul Harris on Unsplash


The Gate and the Door: 2 Jaws

On Thursday 27th August, five weeks after taking office, Andy Burnham visited Belfast for the first time as Prime Minister. Before he came, Michelle O’Neill told journalists what she intended to prioritise. Not the constitutional issue. The budget. She said they needed Burnham to secure a fair deal that would support public services. Nurses, she noted, were already speaking about strike action. They had been starved of funding for years. If he wanted to leave any mark, he could do it by altering the funding model. What existed now was not sufficient. She would put that to him.

He then arrived and dismissed the prospect of a border poll. When asked whether he would be the Prime Minister to trigger one, he said he was there to listen and work with others, but certain matters would not be open for discussion, and that was one of them. According to him, referendums make people turn inward and create divisions that take years to mend, while politicians ought to focus on the cost of living and on reaching agreement on a budget. He repeated the same wording to three different outlets that day, something Claire Hanna observed and interpreted as the obvious conclusion suggested: this was no accidental remark. It had been scripted beforehand.

O’Neill described the comments as anti-democratic, said that night that she had challenged him directly, and insisted that the right to a referendum was protected by the Good Friday Agreement and had to be respected. On that point, she is correct. A few days afterward, at a hunger strike commemoration in Ballina, she went further, saying that a unity referendum is not a favour to be bestowed on the people of Ireland by any English politician, and she made clear that Sinn Féin would not abandon Stormont, because leaving would simply hand the departments to British ministers.

Lay the sequence out and its structure becomes plain. For the meeting, the First Minister said the main issue was money. The Prime Minister came with a prepared refusal on the constitutional question, declined to offer money as well, and went back off home to England. The First Minister then asserted an actual right, and reaffirmed that she would not use the one lever available to her, which is also true. She secured neither the settlement nor the referendum, and she surrendered nothing and obtained nothing. By Wednesday, the position was unchanged.

The gate is locked from the outside. The door is being held from within. Between those two refusals lies the whole northern nationalist position, which over the past month has produced some of the sharpest political analysis written on this island in years, and not a single proposal that would require anything of the people making it.

That is the bind. That is the vice. Sinn Féin is not the only instance of it, though it is the main one. It governs the commentariat, the left, and the people who write essays about it, myself included.

The Free Thing and the Costly Thing

I have argued previously that clarity in Irish politics follows the trail of cost. Politicians become precise when precision is free and drift into vagueness as the price increases. You can locate a person within a structure by watching where their language starts to lose its nouns.

Extend that from an individual to a position and you get the subject of this essay.

Diagnosis costs nothing. A columnist pays nothing to write that Stormont cannot function. A party chair pays nothing to catalogue the DUP’s obstruction. A socialist pays nothing to note that the Irish left has failed to come together. The analysis is strong because analysis is cheap, the demand for it is vast, and nobody producing it has to surrender anything they already possess.

Remedy is another matter. Any course of action that would genuinely alter the position requires someone to pay: to give up an option, to cement an adversary, to state a policy that fractures their own coalition, to pass a project they control to people they do not. As a result, predictably, the remedies never arrive. In their place comes the ask: a request that someone else behave differently. The other side should stop destroying things. The British government should notice. The left should take the lead. The Secretary of State should sort it out.

An ask is not a remedy. It is diagnosis with a profession or vocation attached.

There is also a smaller version of the same pattern, worth noting because it shows how far the free thing can spread. When Stormont collapsed in 2017, nationalist Ireland came to believe that the alternative to devolution was not direct rule but some version of joint authority between London and Dublin. It proved seductive enough that a third of Sinn Féin voters told pollsters that it was their preferred constitutional outcome. It cost nothing to believe it. No negotiation, no concession, no price was required, which is exactly why it spread.

But it was never actually available, and in January 2024 the British government said so in writing. The command paper that secured the DUP’s return to Stormont, Safeguarding the Union, says the Agreement allows only two constitutional possibilities, continued membership of the United Kingdom or a united Ireland, and that the British government does not regard any other model, including any form of joint authority between the United Kingdom and Ireland, as compatible with the Agreement. The same paper says that a prosperous Northern Ireland with stable devolved government is the surest way to persuade the majority that its best future lies within the Union, and it commits the government to making the case for the Union and to creating a foundation to promote it.

That is worth dwelling on. The institutions Sinn Féin now leads were restored on terms in which the British government committed itself, in a paper laid before Parliament, to campaigning against the party’s founding goal and to rejecting the intermediate arrangement that much of its base thought was imminent. All of this is public. It has been public for two years.

Two Indictments and Two Asks

Consider the two most substantial interventions from the party-and-commentariat world over the past month, each made by a serious figure and each presented here in its full force.

Declan Kearney, Sinn Féin’s national chairperson, issued a detailed indictment of the DUP: arrogance, sectarianism, economic illiteracy, obstruction of the Good Jobs Bill, refusal of the Irish language strategy, the entire record. He then called for a new initiative on Irish unity, a single forum where all strands of what he called Irish national democratic opinion would gather, deliberate, agree and speak together. The indictment is sound. The ask is that the DUP change its direction, and that nationalism assemble itself. Neither request costs Sinn Féin anything. The forum, in particular, asks nationalism to do what it finds easiest: speak to itself.

Brian Feeney, writing in the Irish News, said the new Secretary of State is a decent man being fed rubbish by his officials, that the budget arithmetic is impossible and cannot be made workable, that unionism has shifted sharply rightward and elevated culture wars, and that partition is and always has been the problem here. Most of that is defensible, and much of it is plainly true. The final operative sentence of the column is: he should then tell Burnham.

Feeney is the most revealing example, and I want to treat him fairly, because he got farther than anyone. Weeks earlier he had suggested something genuinely costly: that after next year’s election Sinn Féin should renew its mandate and then refuse to form an executive until the British government published the criteria for calling a referendum. That is a real remedy. It has a price, identifies who pays it, and does not rely on anyone else’s goodwill. Yet within a few weeks the same writer had returned to hoping the proconsul would sort it out and say so upstairs. That is not a lapse of nerve on his part. It is gravity. When you let go, the cost-free ask is where the argument settles.

Two of the sharpest people working in this area, in one month, and between them not one proposal that would cost their own side anything.

I should be careful here, though, because there is a version of this that is too tidy, and the past week has produced its clearest exception.

This argument does sometimes name prices. Writing at the end of August, Siobhán Fenton proposed one and then did what almost nobody does with a proposal: she worked out who would have to bear it. Her proposal is the Feeney-boycott: after the May 2027 election, the parties should refuse to form an executive until the British government publishes the criteria for calling a referendum, with Sinn Féin able to say it has upheld its side of the Agreement and it is now Britain’s turn to uphold its own. She then constructs the coalition. The SDLP, because its authorship of the Agreement makes this the one boycott it might tolerate. Alliance, awkwardly positioned because Naomi Long has already called for the criteria to be published and a boycott seeking only clarity is difficult to portray as tribal. The smaller parties, if they return members. And then, unprompted, she argues against herself: that it may be too confrontational, that it could alienate the centre ground that will decide the referendum, and, most importantly, that publication might weaken the pro-unity case in the short term, because whatever the threshold turns out to be it is almost certainly not met yet, and saying that openly would stall the momentum the campaign currently has.

That final point is a cost voluntarily assigned to her own side, and it is the rarest thing in the whole discussion.

Still, note where she stands. Fenton is a journalist. She once worked for the party and no longer does. Feeney, who proposed the same boycott some weeks earlier and had already returned to appeals within another few weeks, is a columnist. Neither of them will be in a room in May 2027 deciding whether to form an executive. However well designed the proposal is, the price would still be paid by somebody else’s leadership.

That is the more truthful version of the finding. The issue is not that nobody can imagine a cost. It is that the ability to name one is inversely related to the chance of having to bear it. The farther you are from the thing that must be surrendered, the more clearly you can see that it ought to be. That describes a critic, and I will return to that.

What the Fleadh Actually Showed

The strongest objection to everything I am arguing was published on The Pensive Quill a week ago by Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, and it should be answered rather than folded away.

His argument is about the Fleadh in Belfast, which nationalist Ireland has spent August reading as evidence that the north has changed beyond recognition. It did change, and the celebration was real. But, he points out, the Fleadh took place in the United Kingdom. Irish identity can now flourish in Belfast much as Scottish and Welsh identity flourish within the same state. Culture is not sovereignty. And the uncomfortable possibility is that the Good Friday Agreement, rather than opening a path out of the Union, may have made the Union much better at accommodating Irishness.

I think he is right, and I think the reason is the mechanism of this essay. The Union grants what is free and withholds what is costly. Irish-language signage, a fleadh in the city centre, an Irish name on a public building: none of these reduce British sovereignty, and a confident state can afford them. Sovereignty itself is the expensive item, and it is not available at any price. So cultural flourishing is not evidence of constitutional movement. It may be the opposite: the sign of a settlement that has learned precisely how much it can concede without conceding anything.

That should disturb anyone who took the Fleadh as a milestone. It certainly disturbs the argument I made two weeks ago.

But it is only half the story, and the other half matters more, because it is the only thing in this whole month that looks like a price being paid rather than merely named.

Read the Fleadh as Ó Súilleabháin does and it is a story about the British state, about what a confident Union can afford to permit. Read it the other way and it is a story about what nationalist Ireland is prepared to offer, in practice, on a street, over eight days, to people who do not share its constitutional goal and will not. Protestants were central to organising it. The deputy First Minister of a unionist party spoke at the opening and was heard. A loyalist flute band played at City Hall. A former UDA man, Davy Adams, wrote afterward in the Irish News that he had finally seen the New Ireland he had spent years failing to describe, and what he described was not a place where his tradition was merely tolerated but one where nobody much cared which foot he kicked with.

That is not a cultural festival being granted by a state. That is a guarantee being rehearsed by a community, and it was rehearsed without a British minister’s permission and at nobody’s invitation but its own.

The distinction matters because it separates accommodation from inclusion, and the whole argument of this essay turns on that. Accommodation is offered from outside by a power that keeps what it values. Inclusion is done from within, at cost, by people who could have chosen otherwise. The first is what the Union extends to Irishness. The second is what happened in Belfast in August, and it is the one thing that answers Ó Súilleabháin’s objection rather than simply absorbing it. If the concern is that the Union has become better at holding Irish identity, the answer is not to deny it. It is that Irish nationalism, for eight days, showed it can hold British identity too, and did so publicly, and nothing collapsed.

None of that is minor, and none of it is new. It is the oldest proposition in the tradition. Tone’s entire formulation was to replace the common name of Irishman for the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter, which is not a plea for tolerance but an argument that the categories should stop being the issue. McCracken was a Presbyterian who died at the end of a rope for a republic he understood in exactly those terms. The reason South Africa works as a comparison is the same reason: the Congress tradition was non-racial from within its own ranks, so the voice that eventually spoke already contained the people it would need to reassure. That is not a concession to unionism added to republicanism from the outside. It is republicanism’s founding sentence, and the Fleadh was eight days of it in action.

The problem, and it is the problem with everything in this essay, is that eight days is not a settlement. What was shown on the street has not been written into a single document, offered at a single table, or costed in a single prospectus. It remains an instinct rather than a guarantee, and instincts are free.

The Asymmetry

It troubles the argument in a second way, which I did not recognise until Anthony McIntyre stated it plainly in response to that essay.

As he observed, unionism is divided at party level but remarkably unified on the constitutional question. Whatever else separates it, it holds together on the Union. Nationalism is close to the opposite: unified at party level, where Sinn Féin has dominated, and much more uncertain constitutionally. Nationalists are more willing to accept rule from London than unionists would ever be to accept rule from Dublin.

If that is correct, and I think it is, then something I wrote two weeks ago needs revision. I had argued that the one truly encouraging figure in northern polling was rising unionist consent, the increasing willingness among unionists to accept a referendum result they would lose. I still think that trend is real and that it is the variable that matters. But willingness to hold a vote is not the same as willingness to lose one, and a bloc that fractures over flags and parades while remaining firm on sovereignty is a bloc whose consent shifts within a much narrower range than I allowed. I moved too quickly. The mechanism is right, but the room for it is smaller than I said.

A New Ireland For Whom

Here is where the same mechanism creates the silence that should concern republicans most, and I am not the first to say it this month. Ó Súilleabháin said it more forcefully than I will, and Colin Gannon has been making a version of the point in Jacobin for years.

Ask what a united Ireland would actually be, and the discussion immediately thins. Who owns its wealth. Who can afford its housing. What kind of health service it would run. How, if at all, it would redistribute resources. What prevents a thirty-two-county state from reproducing the inequalities already present on both sides of the border. These are not questions for the day after unity. They determine whether unity offers anything worth voting for.

They remain unanswered for the same reason everything else here remains unanswered. To specify a cost. The moment you say what kind of Ireland you want, you split the coalition assembled to want an Ireland at all, and a movement that has spent thirty years building that coalition is not going to risk it for the sake of a policy platform. So working-class communities are asked whether they want a new state before being told what it would do for them, and the constitutional question is placed first while its social content is postponed without limit.

The oldest expression of this came from within, long before the current arguments. Brendan Hughes, speaking to Fourthwrite in 2000, said the facade had been cleaned but the bone structure was the same. He was talking about the north. He might just as well have been describing the offer.

The One Who Paid

Two weeks ago I wrote about the one movement that reached this goal and kept it, and I will not repeat the case, only the part that matters here. What made the South African transition succeed was not analysis. Everyone had analysis. What made it work was that Joe Slovo, the person with the most to lose by saying it, named a price his own side would pay and argued for it publicly, in the movement’s own journal, to the people who would bear it: guaranteed employment for the civil service of the state he had fought, a government of national unity with posts divided by share of the vote, and a front that dissolved itself into a table where the other side could say no. He was explicit that a leadership which hid the cost from its base would be accused of selling out, so he did not hide it.

Every one of those was expensive, and that is the whole point. They were not requests aimed at the National Party. They were prices the ANC paid, on its own, in advance, to make the other side’s consent possible. Nothing in current Irish nationalism resembles that, and the absence is not accidental.

What Would Have To Be Given

So, at the risk of doing the very thing I have spent seven sections describing, here is what a serious proposal would need to include. Not what Sinn Féin should do. What anyone serious would have to accept.

First, the recognition that this requires two strategies, not one, which is Fenton’s point and the most useful sentence written on this subject this month. Winning a referendum and getting one called are different problems that require different campaigns, and the movement has only ever built the first. What follows bears on both, but the second is the one that has never been attempted at all.

Preparation before the vote, not agitation for it, which means the costed prospectus nobody wants to write because writing it closes off arguments people would rather keep open.

Guarantees to unionism that unionism helps author, not guarantees presented to unionism by the party that opposed it. That means a table where the other side can say no, which is a real transfer of control and not a forum where one tradition speaks with one voice.

A movement broader than any single party or tendency, which means the people who presently own the unity question would have to give it away, and it is their most valuable asset.

And the social content set out in advance, which means telling people what sort of Ireland before asking them to vote for one, at the price of the coalition that vagueness protects.

Each of those costs somebody something. That is how you know they are remedies rather than asks. It is also exactly why none of them is on the table.

Including This

Which leads me to the part of this essay I would rather not write.

I have spent the spring & summer naming things. The party is constrained by the institutions it leads. The left will not shut the door that would create a bloc. The chairman’s forum is a front for one tradition. The commentariat produces indictments and asks. All of that, I think, is true, and some of it took real work to establish.

None of it cost me anything.

Naming is what this position rewards, and I have been collecting the reward. I have not proposed a single thing that would require the tradition I write from to surrender anything and truly mean it. I have described, with considerable precision, the price others would have to pay and paid none of it myself, and the essays have been better received the more accurately I have described it. The market for accurate diagnosis is excellent, and I am in it.

So the final movement is neither a demand nor a prophecy. It is an admission that the mechanism I have spent seven movements dissecting has its own author inside it, and that a body of work which only ever names things is not a way out of the bind. It is one of the more eloquent things happening within it.

And yet the essay’s own evidence contains its exception, and I have spent eight movements walking past it.

In August, over eight days, the costly act was carried out. It was neither merely suggested, nor priced, nor handed off to a commission for later. It was completed on a street by people with no office to defend and nothing personal to profit from the act. Inclusion came from inside instead of being an accommodation bestowed from outside, offered to a tradition under no duty to accept it, and nothing collapsed. Whatever remains uncertain, that no longer belongs to the realm of theory. It occurred in full view, and thousands witnessed it.

The gap between that and a settlement is genuine, and I have been straightforward about that: eight days do not make a document, and instincts cost nothing. Yet note how much narrower that gap is than the one outlined elsewhere in this essay. It does not call for Burnham to relocate, or for the Treasury to soften, or for a party to summon courage that its incentives discourage. What it does require is that someone put into writing what Belfast has already shown, and then place it on a table where the other side is free to refuse. The difficult part is the demonstration, and the demonstration has already taken place.

The gate is shut from outside, and Burnham has just shut it again. The door is held from inside, and O’Neill has just explained why she is holding it. Everything else, for now, including this, is commentary.

Further Reading

Everything below is worth your time, and most of it is better than the summary I have given it here. Read them in whatever order suits you, though the first two are what set this month’s argument going.

Declan Kearney, “Time for a new initiative on Irish unity”, An Phoblacht, 14th August 2026. The fullest statement of Sinn Féin’s current unity strategy, and the source of the proposal for a single forum of all strands of Irish national democratic opinion. Whatever you make of it, it is the party arguing its own case at length rather than through a press release.

Brian Feeney, Irish News, August 2026. Two columns worth reading together. The first proposes that Sinn Féin renew its mandate next May and then decline to form an executive until the British government publishes the criteria for calling a referendum. The second, “In case the proconsul hasn’t worked it out yet, the problem here is partition”, argues that the difficulty is partition and that the Secretary of State ought to say so to the Prime Minister. The distance between them is the subject of this essay. Feeney has been writing in that paper for thirty years and was an SDLP councillor before that, which is worth knowing when you read him on Sinn Féin.

Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, “The Provo Paradox”, The Pensive Quill, August 2026. The strongest challenge to my own argument, written from inside the tradition by a man who gave it twenty years. His reading of the Fleadh is the part I have had to think hardest about, and his question about what kind of Ireland is being offered, and to whom, is one nobody has answered.

Siobhán Fenton, “Should nationalists boycott Stormont until the British government publishes the criteria for a border poll?”, 30th August 2026. The most practically useful piece written on this in a long time, because it works out who would actually have to carry the proposal and then argues honestly against its own case. Her point that winning a referendum and getting one called are two different campaigns is the one I keep returning to.

Colin Gannon, “Ireland’s Left Should Lead the Campaign for Irish Unity”, Jacobin, August 2026. Makes the case that a unity campaign built on material change in both jurisdictions could break the deadlock. Behind a free registration wall, which is a nuisance, but he has been asking the question about the social content of a new Ireland for years and deserves the credit for getting there early.

Safeguarding the Union, CP 1021, presented to Parliament January 2024. The command paper that bought the DUP’s return to Stormont. Read paragraph 64, which rules out joint authority as inconsistent with the Agreement, and paragraph 6, which states that making devolution work is the surest way to persuade people their future lies within the Union. It is a short read and it is more candid than anything said out loud since.

The ARINS / Irish Times North and South Survey. The most careful polling on constitutional attitudes on this island, and the source of most of the numbers people quote at each other without having looked at them. The material on unionist attitudes to holding a referendum, as distinct from winning one, is the part worth your attention.

Joe Slovo, “Negotiations: What room for compromise?”, The African Communist No.130, Third Quarter 1992. Available in full through the O’Malley archive at the Nelson Mandela Foundation. The document that made the South African settlement possible, written by the man with the most to lose by writing it. It is short, it is unsentimental, and it is the clearest example I know of a leadership telling its own side what a settlement would cost before asking them to accept one.

⏩Louth For Ever writes on Irish politics and constitutional change. Follow for analysis of Ireland’s democratic future as it’s constructed by those actually engaged in the work.

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