Orange front may save Robinson’s face and wipe McGuinness’s eye

IT’S 125 years old this year and if some reports are to be believed, the Orange Card is still the one the British Tories feel should be played. It was Sir Randolph Churchill, Winston’s father, who coined the phrase in the aftermath of the 1885 election and it continues to have a chilly resonance for nationalists.

That year, the Irish Parliamentary Party’s (IPP) representation leapt from 63 to 85 of the 103 Irish seats on an extraordinarily high turnout. With the Liberals unable to form a majority, Charles Stewart Parnell became kingmaker. His instinct had been to keep the Tories in power, but when news filtered out of Gladstone’s conversion to the cause of Home Rule he duly transferred the IPP’s support. Queen Victoria reluctantly accepted the “half-crazy” grand old man as her prime minister for a third time.

The impact in Ulster was immediate: Liberals and Conservatives came together, Churchill making rousing speeches about the danger of Ireland becoming “the focus and the centre of foreign intrigue and deadly conspiracy”. In the face of this threat, loyalists must organise: “Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right,” he famously declared.