Gordon Brown offered Paddy Ashdown the job of Northern Ireland Secretary because:
(a) he thinks things in NI are still dodgy, making someone with Bosnia credentials a good choice to keep things going
(b) he thinks the NI job is the most meaningless one in the Cabinet, and therefore suitable for a token gesture to the Opposition
(c) he's actually quite worried about the Liberals, at least as destination for disillusioned Labour voters, if not a rival for power, and saw this as a way to split them
(d) he's concerned about a perception that he and Ian Paisley might seem to get on too well and so wants a signal of independence in his on-the-spot man in Belfast
(e) all of the above
We vote for (c), with a smidgen of a mischievous sense of history by Gordon, who surely knows what the Irish question did to the Liberals in the past. A bit of closeted hostility to Blair's self-image as Gladstone?
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