The Spectator’s Notes | 10 June 2006

Isn’t it time now that the Conservatives fulfilled their new leader’s pledge.

Although we send 250 police in search of possible terrorists in east London, our government takes a completely opposite attitude to the subject whenever it’s Irish. After the IRA was involved in the murder of Robert McCartney and the robbery of the Northern Bank, the US government last year reimposed the ban on Sinn Fein fundraising in the United States. At the time Mr Blair supported this, but now we are in the extraordinary situation in which the Americans, who since 9/11 have tried to be consistent in their attitudes to terrorism, object more strongly to the IRA than does the nation in which they have done most of their killing. Having all but destroyed the moderate SDLP and the moderate, Trimble-ite Unionists, the British government now wants to get the political process going again, with the Paisleyites and Sinn Fein dividing the spoils. Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, is privately encouraging Mitchell Reiss, President Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, to lift the ban. What makes the situation even odder is that, thanks to an exception specially arranged with Sinn Fein in mind, Northern Irish political parties are allowed by British law to raise money abroad, whereas mainland British political parties are not. If the ban is lifted, therefore, Gerry Adams can fly to New York to drum up custom for the party that he leads, but neither David Cameron nor Tony Blair can do the same.

Isn’t it time now that the Conservatives fulfilled their new leader’s pledge, and broke away from the European People’s Party in the European Parliament? Mr Cameron’s commitment to do so is almost the only definite promise that he made in his leadership campaign, and it did much to secure him the support of those in Parliament and party who might otherwise have considered him too left-wing.