THE Alliance Party leader, Dr John Alderdice, has come under fire from the DUP and the SDLP for accepting a life peerage and excluding himself from standing again in Westminster elections to the House of Commons.
Meanwhile, Dr Alderdice's party faces the problem of finding a strong candidate to challenge Mr Peter Robinson of the DUPE for the East Belfast seat at the next Westminster election.
The SDLP chairman, Mr Jonathan Stephenson, said yesterday that Dr Alderdice's decision was "an astonishing admission of political failure" and "a slap in the face" to those of his supporters who were working for his success at the general election.
Mr Stephenson said in a statement: "Given the huge number of Alliance type people appointed to every sort of quango, the appointment of their leader to the ultimate quango should really come as no surprise."
Mr Stephenson added, however: In this day and age it really is ridiculous for a supposedly modern political party to be led by a lord. The SDLP is not opposed to a second chamber in a parliamentary democracy, but it certainly is against the creation of lords and ladies and all the other trappings of the British class system.
Mr Ian Paisley jnr, of the DUP, said that the East Belfast constituency had "rejected" Dr Alderdice, but the government had now got him into Westminster "through the back door".
Lord Fitt of Bell's Hill - the former Gerry Fitt - congratulated Dr Alderdice and said he hoped they would be able to work together in the House of Lords on their common base of non sectarian politics. Mr Fitt, leader of the SDLP until 1979 and West Belfast MP from 1970 to 1983, was made a life peer in 1983.
Lord Blease, a former Belfast unionist, said that Dr Alderdice would be dedicated to raising the profile of Northern Ireland at Westminster.
Dr Alderdice, who secured 10,650 votes to Mr Robinson's 18,437 in the East Belfast constituency in the 1992 Westminster election, accepted the nomination as a working life peer from the Liberal Democrat leader, Mr Paddy Ashdown.
He said yesterday it seemed to him that it was a chance for the party to have a voice at Westminster which, in his view, "would give an even better chance for us getting people elected to the other House".
Ms Mary Clark Glass, of the Alliance Party, criticised the "cheap and petty remarks" of "certain politicians" about Dr Alderdice's appointment.