With Ian Paisley now likely to face a recall by-election - the first under new 2016 legislation - the race is on to get him back in the Commons for crucial Brexit votes in the autumn. Amusingly, the earliest this can be done would see him back in mid November almost exactly to the day when his suspension would otherwise have run out. Few expect the DUP to field another candidate but as a persistent nuisance to the party leadership, the opportunity to knock Paisley down a peg or two will indicate Arlene Foster’s strength - or weakness.
An intriguing thought experiment, if only because it is so vanishingly improbable, is to imagine Foster standing herself. This would ease the restoration of Stormont under a new first minister - a job Foster is plainly unsuited to - and help refocus her party in much the manner of Gerry Adams quitting Belfast for the Dail. But of course, if the DUP had that sort of gumption, Stormont would not have collapsed in the first place.
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Paisley’s Commons punishment, the harshest on record, could have been even worse. The Committee on Standards decided not to rule on whether he had undermined public trust in the integrity of Parliament or brought the House or its members into disrepute - as its rules of conduct forbid - because “this did not form part of the specific allegations brought against him”.
Paisley now appears to have dropped his libel threats against the Daily Telegraph over how it broke the Sri Lankan story but it is worth recalling that just two months ago a government minister humoured him when he told the Commons there should be “a new Leveson” inquiry into the press in Northern Ireland.
It does trust in Parliament no favours when an MP under scrutiny is allowed to grandstand over media regulation.
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Teacher’s union NASUWT has revealed how indirect rule really works. A pay rise just announced for public sector workers in England cannot be extended to Northern Ireland because there is no question it would normally require ministerial sign-off, not least because existing Stormont budgets would have to be raided to pay for it. The Hightown incinerator case is widely viewed as establishing that such decisions cannot be made by civil servants.
However, the union says civil servants should just go ahead as it doubts a pay rise, in contrast to an incinerator, will be challenged in court.
So there you have it. Indirect rule is like reporting on the DUP: not so much an issue of right or wrong as a matter of judging how likely you are to be sued.
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Chancellor Philip Hammond has visited Northern Ireland and said the government is “inviting a bid for a Derry-Londonderry city deal”.
This could be seen as a bit of a dig at Derry and Strabane Council, which spent the past year blethering on about wanting a city deal, complaining Belfast is getting one when the north west is not and unsubtly implying the whole thing is a sectarian conspiracy.
Then two months ago a freedom of information request by a former SDLP adviser discovered the council had simply never approached the British government to ask for a city deal, as is the correct and hardly onerous procedure.
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Belfast restaurant business Bubbacue has unexpectedly shut, declared bankruptcy and laid off all 35 of its staff without notice, just months after receiving £400,000 from the Northern Ireland Growth Loan Fund to open a third location.
The £50m fund was set up in 2012 to lend to successful small businesses, with most of its capital provided by Invest NI and the local government pension scheme. Three fund management companies established a private consortium, Whiterock Capital Partners, to manage it on a commercial basis.
In accordance with the finest traditions of commercial accountability, the press release Whiterock issued at the time of the Bubbacue loan has vanished from its website. No statement on the closure has replaced it.
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Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill put their Stormont differences aside to lobby for a £15m collection of Titanic artefacts to be acquired from America by National Museums Northern Ireland and Titanic Belfast, mainly for exhibition at the latter. Film director James Cameron is backing the campaign.
The lack of artefacts at Titanic Belfast, which Stormont largely paid to build but does not own, has always been a glaring omission - leading to defensive publicity when the centre opened that it was a monument, not a museum. However, National Museums Northern Ireland, Stormont’s museum quango, has a major collection - including items retrieved from the wreck - on permanent display at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum in Cultra.
Now that Titanic Belfast wants a museum role and what remains of Stormont has agreed to help, would it not make sense - should this new campaign fail - to lend the transport museum’s collection to the visitors' centre, where our high-paying Titanic tourists might actually see it?
newton@irishnews.com
