I am not and have never been a Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds....

The British Constitution; you just gotta love it.

The next Crown Steward and
Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds?

Take the case of the Right Honourable Gerry Adams, member for West Belfast. Despite having fastidiously abstained from attending the Commons throughout the duration of his 23-year Westminster career, it seems that the mother of all parliaments is loathe to let Adams go; at least not without bestowing upon him an honorary title.

According to parliamentary procedure, “under a Resolution of the House of 2 March 1624, Members of Parliament cannot directly resign their seat.” The ordnance goes on to stipulate that; “death, disqualification and expulsion are the only means by which a Member's seat may be vacated during the lifetime of a Parliament.”

It would clearly be in nobody’s interests to try and impose an involuntary disqualification or expulsion on Adams; on what grounds could it be achieved in any event?

Even as an abstentionist, he clearly represented the will of his electorate. Aside from a five-year honeymoon with the SDLP’s Joe Hendron between 1992 and 1997, Grizzly Adams has been the sheriff of West Belfast since 1983.

Now it appears that Adams  may also be in line for a more prosaic title in return for his disqualification. Again, according to parliamentary procedure: “a Member wishing to resign has to go through the process of applying for a paid office of the Crown, which automatically disqualifies the Member from holding a seat in the House of Commons. There are two such offices: Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds and of the Manor of Northstead.”

When questioned in the Commons yesterday by the DUP’s Ian Paisley about the nature of Mr Adams’s resignation, speaker John Bercow said: “There are procedures to be observed and observed they must be.” And until then, it seems that no by-election will be called in the West Belfast constituency.

All manner of conjecture as to what might happen has been exercising amateur constitutionalists across the media.  For openers, it would appear that this problem cannot be solved by appointing Mr Adams to the role, regardless of his own personal wishes.

Spare a thought for Daily Mail readers who doubtless spluttered into their cornflakes when they read that “British taxpayers may be forced to continue paying tens of thousands of pounds a year to Gerry Adams – even if he is elected to the Irish Parliament.”

There are even improbable suggestions from would-be constitutional pundits on both sides of the Irish Sea that Adams could theoretically continue to hold his Westminster seat even while sitting in Leinster House.

Michael Crick at the BBC thought that he saw a solution in a situation whereby Mr Adams was persuaded to try and take his Commons seat without taking the oath of allegiance, in such a scenario, he would be automatically disqualified.

Of course, all of this fails to take into account the fact that Adams is simply not interested in observing the arcane procedures of an institution he has, with his constituents' blessing, boycotted for more than 20 years.

A Sinn Féin spokesperson had this to say: “From our position, Gerry Adams has resigned. He informed the speaker on Friday and for us that’s it, it’s a done deal – sin é, basically.”

Adams, if he were somehow compelled to take this title, would be in illustrious company; one recent recipient of the title Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds is Mrs Robinson, the lusty wife of DUP leader Peter.