Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

THE murders of two soldiers and a police officer in Northern Ireland caused some people to think that their worst fears were being realised. However, the Troubles will return to pose a serious threat to the Stormont Assembly only if dissident republicans are able to provoke the lunatic fringe of loyalism into joining a campaign of sectarian tit-for-tat slaughter.

IT’S a strange feature of politics that people can see their opponents’ flaws but not their own. Much of the discussion about combating the British National Party in the forthcoming European elections has centred on exposing its nostalgia, which harks back to an idealised past when this country was supposedly much more peaceful and homogenous.

WHAT Barack Obama can actually accomplish as President of the United States will depend less on his impressive political and rhetorical talents than on the balance of political and social forces in the country.

SINCE comprehensive education was introduced, barriers to achievement for many young people have been removed. However, in some areas of England, comprehensive schooling should be regarded, not as a “failed experiment”, but as an experiment that has yet to be tried.

MOST political memoirs and diaries are deeply disappointing. I know, because I’ve ploughed through hundreds of them in the past 25 years in the course of everyday political journalism and historical research.

THE House of Commons’ Chamber is a strange place at present – almost nothing is happening. There is no major legislation going through Westminster. Most of the discussions about major decisions – such as a third runway at Heathrow and the partial sale of the Royal Mail – have taken place among ministers across the road in Downing Street. “Our latest initiative is to have no initiatives that aren’t about sorting the economy”, one former minister wryly tells me.