A Protestant Nationalist member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Jordan was elected at the 1885 general election as MP for the Western division of County Clare. His only opponent was a Conservative, who won less than 4% of the votes. He was returned unopposed in 1886. When the Irish Party split in 1891 over the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell, Jordan sided with the majority Anti-Parnellite faction - he had been the first Nationalist MP to call for Parnell's resignation, partly because of his close association with the English Methodist spokesman Hugh Price Hughes. At the 1892 general election he did not stand again in West Clare (where the Parnellite candidate won a large majority), but in North Fermanagh, where he lost the seat to a Unionist candidate.