Colum packs it in

Colum Eastwood has resigned his post as leader of the SDLP.  Will he continue as an MP in Westminster? Not clear. Certainly Julian Smith, former British pro-consul in this region, hopes he will . Smith  has responded to his stepping down and lathered Colum in compliments, ending with a stirring  ‘Ar aghaidh!” (Forward!)

As a sitting MP since 2019, Colum has rarely passed up an opportunity to give a dig at Sinn Féin, whose MPs don’t take their seats in Westminster. In contrast Colum took his,  and  so for the last five years was able  to …well, do all sorts of things, but mainly address largely empty House of Commons benches. To be fair to him, Colum is an eloquent public speaker, but it must have been dispiriting for him to find himself so often addressing  empty green benches.

But before he could stand up and address an echoing chamber,  he first had to show where he stood in terms of the British monarchy. He could have taken the oath to the British king:

“I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.”

But Colum doesn’t believe in bringing God into these matters, and so made the alternative  ‘affirmation’:

“I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queem Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law.”

To  help his constituents understand   just where he stood on this matter, Colum told them that t while he might be solemnly, sincerely and truly affirming his true allegiance to Queen Elizabeth, he really was just reading out “an empty formula” so he could “represent his constituents”. I think that means he didn’t believe a word of what he was saying, so you might want to keep that in mind next time Colum asks you to lend him £1,000 and solemnly, sincerely and truly assures you he’ll pay you back by Friday.

But will Colum continue as an MP, now that he’s resigned from SDLP leadership? That’s not clear, although if I had a job that paid me over £91,000 annually (yes, Virginia, that’s nudging on half a million over five years), I’d have to do a bit of thinking.

Like Colum, the poet John Milton had no time for the monarchy. Unlike Colum,  Milton was less in favour of  vowing allegiance to any monarch and more in favour of cutting off their head. But while a man of stern principle, Milton was also a man of feeling, and wrote a moving tribute to his friend Edward King (no, Virginia, he wasn’t a king but he was a King) who had been drowned in a boating accident. Milton ended his poem ‘Lycidas’ with the famous lines

Will Colum’s new pasture, should he forsake his present one, deliver the same amount of lettuce? Maybe his admirer Julian Smith has something in mind for him.