Brown Bought DUP

In his New Year message to the DUP, Peter Robinson has suggested that Gordon Brown 'rewarded' Northern Ireland for the votes of 9 DUP MPs that proved decissive in the 42-days detention vote.

"Would we have got the £900 million if we had been irresponsible in the way that we behaved at Westminster?

"I think there is a recognition that if you are seen to be acting responsibly, then people will act responsibly with you."

He said government also brought forward legislation to compensate Orange Order Halls attacked by arsonists and accepted DUP changes to the proposals.

Mr Robinson said: "We have had a good relationship with the government which has paid off for the people of Northern Ireland."

He added: "We didn't ask for any of those things. We recognised that if people saw that we were behaving responsibly, that we were a credible party at Westminster, that they could deal with, that people would deal with us in a way that was helpful to the electorate in Northern Ireland

English MPs voted against 42-days detention, and so it was the votes of these Northern Irish MPs, for whom internment is nothing out of the ordinary, that carried the vote for the British Government against English wishes.

Although "anti-terror" legislation is a reserved matter, there is nothing preventing Holyrood, Cardiff Bay and Stormont debating it and coming out in opposition, or in favour, on behalf of the nations they represent. In reserved matters, as in devolved matters, a national debate and expression of national interest is denied to England, and it is left to bloggers like me to point out that England voted NO on detention.

And what really pisses me off is the fact that Peter Robinson appears to think that he can have the same sort of leverage with the Conservatives over the West Lothian Question, as he had with Brown over 42-days detention.

Asked what his party would do [on English votes] if they held the balance of power in Westminster, Robinson said: "We will do what anybody would expect a mature political party to do. We will look at what is in the interests of the United Kingdom as a whole, we will look at what is in the interests of Northern Ireland and we will make a decision based on that and that alone.

"We have a good relationship with the Conservative Party and that might lean us in that direction but as you saw with the 42-day vote issues are important to us.

"We will look at the situation at the time though clearly there would be an assumption in favour of the Conservative Party if the circumstances were right."

English democracy and liberty used as a bartering chip by religious fundamentalists in Ireland. If there is a good argument for English independence, then this is it.