The Manor of Northstead

It will doubtless be delighted at the appointment of its new Crown Steward and Bailiff, Gerry Adams, Paid Officer of the Crown.

Nothing more than a semantic change, you may say, since he and his co-partisans have been in receipt of several salaries each from Her Majesty's Treasury for a good many years now, notably for a job which they have never made any bones about having no intention of doing, but for which they still felt it necessary to maintain a considerable London residence at the British taxpayers' expense. You just can't get the restaurants anywhere else except New York. And New York, even if they were no strangers to it, was too far away, with no public authority prepared to pay for their house.

Still, assuming that anyone can work out who is supposed to move the writ, this by-election presents something of an opportunity. Last year, the Workers' Party did not contest that seat for the first time in living memory, while no "dissident Republican" stood anywhere. But if there really is still anyone who objects to representation and leadership by people who are on multiple salaries from the Queen and who prefer to live in London whenever possible, and who therefore cannot imagine anything worse than any change to the current constitutional arrangements, then this is their chance to test the strength of their feeling at the ballot box.