Blair’s pal needs a history lesson

AS TONY Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell was a key figure in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Powell has now branded a proposed pact between the Tories and the Democratic Unionist Party as ‘sordid’.

‘No British government has ever thought of depending on the DUP,’ he claimed.

He has a short memory. Gordon Brown tried and failed to secure the support of the DUP after the inconclusive 2010 election.

Former Lib Dem MP David Alton, now a crossbench peer, has defended Tim Farron, who quit as party leader because of the conflict over his Christian beliefs. ‘It’s ironic that a party I joined as a teenager because of the belief in conscience, human rights and free speech, has morphed into something so narrow and intolerant...’

Meanwhile, in 1997, John Major’s administration had a majority of one but survived courtesy of the Ulster Unionists and Labour PM Jim Callaghan struck a deal with Unionists in 1979 when his government was on its deathbed.

Robert Harris, the Labour-supporting bestselling novelist, tweets: ‘imagine Churchill in 1940 refusing to meet the bombed-out victims in the east end.’ Who was he referring to?

A Panellist on BBC1’s have I Got news For You, the Labour MP Angela eagle played up her woman of the people credentials by declaring her love of Lidl, the no-frills supermarket chain. Asked about the company, she said she thought it was ‘Italian or Spanish’. Sorry, Angela, but it’s German.