Cameron may make it to Northern Ireland

David Cameron’s on-off trip to Northern Ireland may be back on, I am told.

The Tories think they’ve found a helicopter that can do the job and get them round the problems with Irish air space and the volcanic ash.

David Cameron is off to speak in favour of the 17 Unionist and Conservative candidates in the reborn alliance of those parties. He’s expected to speak in the Strangford seat formerly held by the DUP’s Iris Robinson, who is standing down for well-publicised reasons.

In a national campaign not celebrated for candour on the detail of the pain ahead as the next government pays off the debt, David Cameron did talk about how the North East of England and Northern Ireland were examples of parts of the UK where the public sector had got too fat.

The remarks have been much used against him and his Unionist allies in the Northern Ireland campaign. In a speech he still hopes to deliver in Northern Ireland later, David Cameron will say he wants to look “at ways of turning Northern Ireland into an enterprise zone” but “there is no way Northern Ireland will be singled out over and above any other part of the UK”. Equal treatment is what they are worried about, not being singled out. They want a continuation of the unequal treatment.

There’s a poll in the Belfast Telegraph suggesting that the Ulster Unionists won’t be picking up any seats in this election but Tories dispute the credibility of the poll. Meanwhile some will question the tactics of David Cameron going out of his way to pick a fight with Peter Robinson’s DUP on the eve of an election which could result in him needing their MPs’ support in a hung parliament.

There was a telling moment in Gordon Brown’s interview on GMTV. He was sitting side by side with Sarah. He was asked what else he might do if his political career was terminated by the electorate.

He gave the much-rehearsed answer about wanting to work in the charitable sector… then he said, rather dismissively, I thought, “I don’t want to do business or anything else.”