SINN FÉIN president Gerry Adams, who tendered his resignation as an MP last week, has been appointed without his agreement as crown steward and bailiff of the manor of Northstead by British chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne.
Under 400-year-old Westminster rules, an MP who wants to quit must temporarily occupy the Northstead sinecure, or become crown steward and bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham.
The Treasury in London said yesterday that Mr Adams’s one-line resignation letter was being treated as an application for one of the crown offices and dealt with accordingly.
“Gerry Adams has said publicly that he is resigning from parliament,” a spokesman said.
“Consistent with long-standing precedent, the chancellor has taken this as a request to be appointed the steward and bailiff of the manor of Northstead and granted the office.”
In the House of Commons yesterday, prime minister David Cameron could not hide his mirth as he told Democratic Unionist MP Nigel Dodds about the appointment of the republican leader to the nominally-paid position.
“First of all, just in case everyone has not caught up with the news, the right honourable gentleman is quite right that the honourable member for Belfast West has accepted an office of profit under the crown, which is, of course, the only way to retire from this House.
“I am not sure that Gerry Adams will be delighted to be a baron of the manor of Northstead, but none the less, I am pleased that tradition has been maintained,” he said, to laughter from MPs on both sides of the House.
Mr Adams, however, later pointed out that he had not applied for the crown sinecure and nor had he accepted the appointment, as Mr Cameron had told MPs.
“I simply resigned. I was not consulted, nor was I asked to accept such an office. I am an Irish republican. I have had no truck whatsoever with these antiquated and quite bizarre aspects of the British parliamentary system,” he said.
Mr Adams is running in Louth in the general election. There is no legal bar on someone being an MP and a TD at the same time.
A Downing Street spokesman said last night Mr Cameron was standing by remarks he made during prime minister’s questions yesterday regarding Mr Adams’s status.
But he said Mr Cameron’s private secretary had apologised to Mr Adams for the fact that news of the appointment had been made public without his foreknowledge.
Even if he does not want to be the temporary holder of the post of chief steward and bailiff of the manor of Northstead, Mr Adams is in good historical company, since it was previously held by the son of Daniel O’Connell, also named Daniel, in 1863 and by Land League founder Michael Davitt in 1899.
In the 1980s it was held by the colourful Robert Kilroy-Silk, who left politics for a job in television.