Jason Cowley errs in stating that John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party “formed a coalition with Herbert Asquith’s Liberals in 1910”( Politics interview, 27 March). Asquith depended on the IPP’s 70 or so MPs’ votes, but he secured them readily when he removed the Lords veto on legislation in 1910-11, which ensured that Ireland finally got Home Rule in 1914. A peace-time coalition was unnecessary.
When Redmond was offered a senior post in Asquith’s war-time coalition in May 1915, he turned it down.
Alistair Lexden
House of Lords
London SW1
(Originally published in The New Statesman on 10th Apr)