Robinson does the right thing

Fair play to Peter Robinson who has just announced that he is to stand aside for six weeks whilst an official enquiry takes place into allegations concerning his wife,secret loans and her lover.

Enterprise minister Arlene Foster will take his place during that time.

It was difficult to see any other way out for Robinson after his wife Iris, an Assembly member and MP for Strangford, had an affair with a teenager.It then emerged that she had secured £50,000 from two wealthy developers to help 19-year-old lover Kirk McCambley set up a restaurant business in south Belfast.

A solution for the Tories on the next vote

The recriminations I am sure will continue for sometime over the DUP votes yesterday but over at Centre Right,Simon Chapman asks a poignent question of the Tory party

If the Conservative Party genuinely aspired to represent everybody, we would contest parliamentary seats in Northern Ireland. And if we had contested Ulster seats in 2005 and previous years, would there be as many as 9 DUP MP's? Or would the electoral arithemetic be rather different?

Meanwhile just how principled were the DUP? Jenny McCartney over at three line whip says

Willie McCrea, a senior DUP politician, proclaimed after the vote that the DUP "decided on an issue of principle on national security" and that "we could not in any way put our hands to something that would endanger the UK."

But she adds

All very high-minded, except that it doesn't explain why the DUP - despite having had ample time in which to consider the merits of the proposal - flatly refused to reveal its "principled" stance in the run-up to the vote. It also doesn't explain why the DUP leadership was reportedly holding meetings with the Prime Minister until late yesterday afternoon