Ian Paisley’s suspension gives voters the chance to force an election
“GET him out! Get him out!” calls a middle-aged woman hurrying along a damp Ballymena street in North Antrim. “He’s a muppet!” Ian Paisley, the local Democratic Unionist MP, may be used to this sort of criticism from nationalist opponents. But he now finds himself under fire from both sides of Northern Ireland’s political divide. “I always vote DUP,” says the woman, “but I think he has done wrong—absolutely.”
Her judgment is in line with the House of Commons, which voted in July to impose an unusually severe penalty on Mr Paisley for failing to declare two family holidays to Sri Lanka, paid for by the Sri Lankan government. The trips, which took place in 2013, featured business-class air travel, swanky hotels and helicopter flights, in a package worth at least £50,000 ($65,000). Later, Mr Paisley pressed the British government to oppose a move by the United Nations to investigate human-rights violations in Sri Lanka.
The...