There was a roaring inevitability about it all. It was always going to end in embarrassment of one sort or another.
If Sinn Féin were happy to indulge Barry McElduff's peculiar habit of placing random objects on his head and then posting the footage and photographs online, they can hardly claim to be either shocked or surprised when he eventually put the wrong object on at the wrong time. That he managed, at the same time, to offend most unionists - even the most liberal of them - and make a mockery of Sinn Féin's high horse mantra about respect, turned an act of gross stupidity (irrespective of whether or not his offence was deliberate) into a PR nightmare for Sinn Féin.
They had to be seen to do something, particularly after Declan Kearney had acknowledged the scale of McElduff's stupidity in interviews on Monday morning. There were a number of options. They could have disowned him entirely and expelled him from the party. But he might have chosen to hang on as an independent MP (co-option is not available for errant MPs) and deprived them of a seat. They could have persuaded him, in the interests of the party, to fall on his sword and trigger a by-election (for good measure he could have placed the sword on his head and filmed himself walking into the disciplinary meeting); although that, as it would have with expulsion, could have created a split with his many supporters in West Tyrone.
Since a rap on the knuckles was never going to be enough, the only remaining option was suspension. But what, in essence, does suspension actually mean? He remains an MP and his office will remain open. He is still Sinn Féin's primary public representative in the constituency. He remains a very high profile figure. So, unless the suspension turns out to have some sort of follow-though in terms of reining him in and imposing constraints on his personal use of social media, it looks like a very soft landing for him. Unless, of course, there will be a move further down the line to deselect him; or a 'rethink/reconsider' statement from him in a few weeks time in which, 'having thought about it and talked to people,' he makes the 'personal' decision to stand down.
One thing is clear, though, the story is not going to go away. It will be trotted out every time a Sinn Féin spokesman or statement refers to 'respect.' The footage will be replayed over and over again. To 'do a McElduff' will enter the language. And Sinn Féin will be well aware of the negative impact: they have used bloopers and monumental foot-in-mouths from unionist politicians as part of their political/electoral propaganda for decades. McElduff's is spectacularly stupid and offensive and even Sinn Féin's usually reliable band of back-the-party-at-all-costs supporters on Twitter and Facebook are keeping their heads down.
Yet, when all is said and done I don't suppose it will hurt Sinn Féin all that much in the long run. The toxicity between the DUP and Sinn Féin (and between unionism and nationalism generally) is now so deep that supporters are more willing to turn a blind eye and carry on voting.
I actually believe - I really do - that many ordinary Sinn Féin voters will view McElduff's self-promoting stunt as genuinely stupid (even an abstentionist MP must have something more useful, more grown-up to do than play party tricks?); but their contempt for the DUP is so overwhelming that they would probably vote for him if he is the candidate again at the next election.
The worst aspect of this story, of course, is that the feelings of surviving victims and the relatives of victims have been trampled on all over again. There is, it seems, no respite for them. Almost every day in Northern Ireland a memory will be retriggered by a passing reference to an atrocity, by archive footage on radio or television, or by a debate on legacy issues.
That sense of loss never goes away. That need for justice and closure never goes away. That feeling that a chair remains unfairly empty never goes away. So most of us can't even begin to imagine how the Kingsmill relatives and survivors felt when the McElduff story hit the headlines. Nothing will ever relieve, let alone diminish, the additional pain they will now have to carry for the rest of their lives.
And that, in the final analysis, is the real, lasting, unforgivable legacy of McElduff's stupidity. It was and remains a resignation issue. Sinn Féin should have insisted upon it.
