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.