Replay: How Will Ireland’s New President Change Irish-UK Relations? Meet the Leaders with Philip Stephens

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Watch this discussion on how will the election of the anti-establishment Presidential candidate, Catherine Connolly, may change the complex relationship between the UK and Ireland, recorded on Monday 8th December 2025.

Watch an interactive ‘Meet the Leaders’ discussion examining the complexities that underpin UK-Irish relations with Philip Stephens, a long-standing and award-winning Contributing Editor at the Financial Times and author of These Divided Isles, in conversation with Vicky Pryce, Chair of Fellows at Radix Big Tent and a leading economist.

In his new book These Divided Isles, Philip Stephens analyses how Ireland might deploy its history to inform its future rather than hold it in place. Can some of the damage to Anglo-Irish relations of the last decade be undone? Given Putin’s aggression, will Ireland’s neutrality become more of an issue? And is Irish unity more likely with Catherine Connolly as President? 

Philip Stephens

Philip Stephens is a writer and historian. He is a Contributing Editor at the Financial Times, and the author of Inside-Out, a regular column on Substack. A visiting senior fellow at the School for Transnational Governance of the European University Institute, he is also a Richard von Weizsacker fellow at the Bosch Academy in Berlin, an Honorary Governor at the Ditchley Foundation, and a member of Aspen Italia, Rome. He serves on the steering group of the Franco-British Colloque.

 

Prior to writing These Divided Isles, Britain Alone: the Path from Suez to Brexit was published by Faber in 2021. He has won the three main prizes in British political journalism, being named as winner of the David Watt prize for Outstanding Political Journalism, as Political Journalist of the Year by the UK Political Studies Association,and as Political Journalist of the Year in the British Press Awards. He is the author of Politics and the Pound, a study of British economic and European policy, and of Tony Blair, a biography of the former prime minister.

 

Website: philipstephens.net
Substack: philipstephens.substack.com

Vicky Pryce

Vicky is the Chair of the Fellows at Radix Big Tent and a leading economist whose career includes being Director General for Economics at the Department for BIS, Joint Head of the UK Government Economic Service and Chief Economist and Partner at KPMG. She is currently Chief Economic Adviser at the Centre for Economics and Business Research. She is also Chair of the Economic Advisory Council for the British Chambers of Commerce and a visiting Professor at KCL and BCU. She is co-founder of GoodCorporation, a company set up to advise on Corporate Social Responsibility.