The Rev Ian Paisley's DUP is unlikely to
be impressed by the latest Tory idea
Photograph: Cathal McNaughton/PA
Even by recent standards, the latest whiff of policy from the Conservative frontbench is remarkable. Yesterday, today's Telegraph reports, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, David Lidington, suggested that the parliamentary oath of allegiance to the Queen, which all MPs have to declare, might be changed to allow Sinn Féin MPs to take their seats.
This is a brave attempt to cut through the Gordian knot of Sinn Féin's "Short money", which the Commons debated heatedly yesterday. MPs eventually voted to let Sinn Féin MPs collect more than £800,000 in parliamentary allowances, even though they refuse to take their seats in the Commons. Unionists were particularly appalled by the decision because it emerged this week that some IRA members have held onto their guns, contrary to the organisation's promise that all weapons would be put beyond use.
While it hardly amounts to a wholesale rethinking of the Conservative and Unionist party's stance towards Sinn Féin, Mr Lidington's remarks went down like a papal bull among Unionists. the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists have not yet made an official comment, but a peer belonging to the more moderate Ulster Unionist party, Lord Kilclooney of Armagh, said he was "shocked".
It was all to no avail, of course: Sinn Féin reiterated that their main beef was not the oath but the very fact that representatives from the north of the island sit at Westminster rather than Dublin. "Sinn Féin are absolutely opposed to the British government exercising jurisdiction over part of our country and we will not legitimise this practice by sitting in their parliament," said the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Michelle Gildernew.
So what was Mr Lidington's purpose? Could David Cameron's Conservatives be gently trying to distance themselves from the Unionists? Only one UUP MP was elected last May, leaving the uncompromising and decidedly un-modern Mr Paisley the effective leader of the Unionist movement. After all, despite their historical links, the Tories have no seats in Northern Ireland to lose. (Their Northern Ireland site has been undergoing reconstruction for some time.) One thing is for sure: this is one Gordian knot that will take a very long time and a colossal effort to slice through.
