MR TRIMBLE´S FURY

l PRIME Minister's Question Time was drawing to an uneventful close yesterday when the Speaker called David Trimble to ask the last question. Mr Trimble's face got redder and redder as he spoke of the “vomit-making hypocrisy” of the alleged kidnap and murder plot in Belfast over the weekend for which, he said, the IRA had been responsible. Accusing the Government of “moral cowardice” he said that if Mr Blair did not make his position clear on the continued involvement of the IRA in the on-going peace negotiations his Ulster Unionist Party would withdraw next Monday from the discussions over reviving the Northern Ireland executive. While declining to discuss the individual case, the Prime Minister said action would follow if it were shown that the IRA were behind the event mentioned by Mr Trimble: “You cannot preach human rights one moment then beat the human rights out of someone the next.” MPs, and perhaps Mr Blair too, were taken aback by the passion in Mr Trimble's question. But it has to be remembered that he and his Party are not any longer the first voice of Unionism in Northern Ireland - the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists supplanted them at the elections last November. For the rest, Question Time reverted to the pattern that became so boringly familiar during Mr Duncan Smith's leadership of the Conservatives. Any Opposition question which the Prime Minister can interpret as requiring extra expenditure is instantly dismissed because “those opposite have said they are against increasing expenditure - oh yes they have!” When a Conservative MP quite mildly asked for better funding for village halls he was given the full treatment by Mr Blair as if the cost of providing somewhere for the annual flower show would increase the National Debt.