Sinn Fein should take its seats at Westminster to bring down the Government and frustrate Brexit

IN the upcoming by-election in West Tyrone, the Sinn Fein candidate has identified Brexit as the issue that will frame the campaign.

As someone who has attempted to dismantle Theresa May’s precarious parliamentary majority through the courts, I envy the effect a prospective Sinn Fein MP could have in bringing the beleaguered Tory Government down — and over Brexit.

If the election is about Brexit, if there will not be a new Executive at Stormont, if the hard Right of the Conservative party and their DUP friends have Theresa May on the ropes, surely now is the time for the seven Sinn Fein MPs to take their seats?

That would present a fatal blow to Theresa May’s leadership and throw her party into immediate disarray.

If no leader emerges, it could precipitate a general election that could see a socialist Prime Minister take power with an anti-austerity agenda and who would keep Northern Ireland within the customs union (if not the single market). It might even frustrate the whole Brexit process.

The political value of Sinn Fein taking their seats could scarcely be higher. With their nationalist competition, the SDLP, effectively neutered, the opportunity of a by-election in a safe border constituency, when the UK Government is particularly vulnerable, is surely tantalising.

Sinn Fein’s stock would rise in Northern Ireland, the Republic, Britain and Europe — all over a banal ‘oath’ that many MPs take with their fingers crossed behind their backs anyway.

CIARAN McCLEAN By email