Michael White's political briefing: Cameron cosies up to Unionists

It should hardly have come as a complete surprise to mainland Britain yesterday that David Cameron is shaping up to revive the historic Conservative and Unionist party label which existed between the 1880s and the schism over the imposition of direct rule from Whitehall as the Troubles deepened in 1974. After all, David Trimble, still the brains behind the official Ulster Unionists, gave a hint in 2007 when he took the Tory whip in the Lords. And any thoughts of the detoxed Cameron Tories hitching up with the ascendant Democratic Unionist party must have been stymied by this month's running controversy over homophobic remarks (worse than child molesting, she said) made by Iris Robinson MP, "Ayatollah Iris" as the wags call her. The intriguing questions are: Why? Why now? And who benefits? From the UUP's standpoint it is... [read full story]