Payback Time

The Democratic Unionist Party was wrong about 42-detention without charge (not trial, charge). And I am not entirely convinced that it is right about Heathrow expansion, although I do tend to side with unions rather than luvvies.

But its MPs were just doing what politicians are supposed to do when they ensured a good dose of economic populism as their price for supporting the former. And their price for supporting the latter seems to have been Gordon Brown’s endorsement at PMQs of Nigel Dodds’s furious repudiation of the payment of “compensation” to or in right of terrorists, so that it looks as if no such payment will be made while Brown has anything to do with it.

And on that, at least, they are absolutely right.