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Marriage of convenience or despair?
Chris McGimpsey on the potential and dangers of the link between the Ulster Unionists and the Tories.
The attacks by the Democratic Unionist Party on the Ulster Unionists over that party's proposed linkage with the Tories hardly rings true. Nevertheless, it appears clear that the DUP are deeply concerned at the prospect. What they have not yet told their supporters is that they had been attempting a similar linkage for some time only to be rebuffed by David Cameron. Their cosying up to the Tories was principally led by Peter Robinson and Jeffrey Donaldson.
The problem for the DUP is that their pedigree and current attitudes is something they cannot escape from. The inevitable blurring of Free Presbyterian theology and DUP policy in the popular mind will always haunt Robinson's party here and at Westminster. In Northern Ireland people are used to sitting across a coalition table from people with whom they have nothing in common. The Stormont Executive is based upon just such a formula. Westminster is very different.
In any case the 'agreement' which the Conservatives believed they had with the Democratic Unionists over the 42 day detention bill crashed spectacularly when the DUP backed the Government. Labour won by nine votes, the exact number of DUP votes cast against Cameron. Salt was added to the wounds by Iris Robinson's now infamous nine-finger taunting of the Opposition benches.
Furthermore, that same politician's views on homosexuality have proven equally debilitating at Westminster. Whilst her description of gay men as an abomination in the sight of God may have played well with many DUP voters in Northern Ireland, it was not so enthusiastically welcomed in London. Could a DUP MP sit at a Cabinet table next to an abomination without embarrassment? Cameron, presumably, does not think so. This impression of DUP/Free Presbyterian opposition to homosexuality will have been further strengthened by the appearance in the papers recently of Dr Paisley along with Rev David McIlveen confirming their willingness to go to prison rather than change their stance on gays.
There are no such difficulties for Cameron with the Ulster Unionists. Sir Reg Empey sounds and acts like a One Nation Tory. The Party has a distinguished pedigree. Sir Edward Carson served in David Lloyd George's War Cabinet and the UUP had a linkage with the British Conservatives for decades. For over 70 years Ulster Unionist MPs took the Tory whip.
The question today must be why do Cameron and Empey wish to resurrect a relationship which collapsed so ignominiously and with such rancour 25 years ago.
From David Cameron's point of view the linkage with the Ulster Unionists helps him to fulfill his promise to rebuild the Conservative Party into a party for all of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The last attempt to extend the Conservative into Northern Ireland failed spectacularly. Having organised throughout the Province they had limited success. In the 1989 council elections the Conservatives gained six seats in North Down with an Independent Conservative being elected in Lisburn.
The question as to how popular or otherwise this new political movement would be in Northern Ireland was to be decided at the 1989 European Election. Dr Laurence Kennedy, by far their most articulate spokesman, was the Conservative candidate. With 534,811 valid votes cast, Kennedy captured 25,789 or 4.8% of the vote. In the Westminster General Election of 1992 their share of the vote had increased to 5.7% but by the following year's local government elections their vote had collapsed to 9,437 votes or 1.5%.
It is not hard to see the benefit to Cameron's Conservatives of the new dispensation he and Sir Reg Empey are suggesting. If the Conservatives are to build a viable future in Northern Ireland then a new methodology is required. His party will not wish to repeat the mistakes of history. The Conservatives will not attempt to build from the grassroots again. With this new approach David Cameron acquires a Province-wide organisation. If he gets the branding right he should be able to boast almost 200 councillors and 18 MLAs throughout Northern Ireland. And he gets the full package at virtually no cost.
David Cameron will have been impressed by his few hours in the Belfast last week.
The UUP Conference was a major success for the Party. It was, according to journalists, a little over twice the size of the DUP gathering. There were many more young people there than in previous years. The former archtypical Young Unionist – a middle-class extreme right wing baby barristers who saw themselves as a party within a party – has been replaced by young articulate intelligent party members. This in itself should auger well for the future. Also, there was a real buzz about the gathering.
It is clear that all of these positives did not simply emerge three weeks previously when the news filtered out that Cameron would be in town. The UUP is on the way back. The Dromore by-election victory was a pointer and the fact that the DUP had to discard its candidate in Fermanagh and force Arlene Foster, Minister and MLA to stand so that they could save their seat further indicated that the tide was turning. The DUP realised this, even if some in the UUP did not.
Nevertheless no one can doubt that David Cameron's attendance at the UUP Conference was a success. His speech was well researched and well crafted. He hit many of the key buttons. In his opening remarks he stated that he had come to the Conference for three reasons. Firstly, because of his commitment to the Union; secondly because of his strong belief in the Union; and thirdly because of his great respect for the Ulster Unionist Party. (Well done that man.)
But this Conservative love affair with the UUP is based upon David Cameron. One of the great achievements of the Conference was that he recanted on Peter Brooke's infamous phrase that the UK had 'no selfish strategic or economic interest in Northern Ireland'. This was useful and no one doubts that Cameron meant it. But what happens if Labour win the next election and the Tories dump Cameron, only to replace him with a new leader who holds the same views as Peter Brooke and the Conservative Party in 1991. Where does the new project go to then?
When Owen Paterson, the Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland addressed the UUP Executive he had made much of the fact that Jim Nicholson sits in the Conservative group in Europe, a theme that Cameron returned to in his speech. But the truth is that the Ulster Unionists and the British Tories actually are members of the European Peoples Party-European Democrats.
And in any case, sitting in a particular grouping in Europe may not mean an awful lot. Nicholson's predecessor, Rt. Hon. John Taylor joined the Right Group because it gave him considerable additional influence over agricultural policy, an area of great importance to all Northern Ireland parties. This group included representatives from Jean Marie Le Pen's Front Nationale in France and a sprinkling of neo-fascists from Spain and Italy. No one used that fact to argue that we should link up with the BNP in England.
Nicholson has already been selected to run in the Euro elections in 2009 as an Ulster Unionist and, it seems, also as a Conservative. Cameron made reference to Jim Nicholson in his speech and said that it was essential that Nicholson was returned to the Conservative group in Strasbourg. But Nicholson will be returned as an Ulster
Unionist to sit in the European Peoples' Party grouping in Europe.
It is well recognised that David Cameron is unhappy with the EPP-ED and wishes to remove the Conservatives from that group in 2009. Will Jim Nicholson be forced to do the same and leave a grouping which has treated him well (he is one of three EPP-ED quaestors) and in which he has hitherto been very happy. And all at the behest of Tory Central Office. Or will Jim Nicholson commit to stay within EPP-ED as part of his campaign? Will the 'Euro-realist' edge closer to being a 'Euro-sceptic'. The answer to these questions will surely give a sense of how much latitude and independence the UUP will enjoy within this new force.
The pay back for the Ulster Unionists is harder to quantify. During discussions with party members the suggestion has frequently been made that this will place us at the heart of British politics. Henceforth we will be able to deal with issues affecting the entire Kingdom. Not for us the coral of Northern Ireland. It was as if people had been reading old Bob McCartney speeches from bygone CEC meetings.
One assertion which has been made time and again at UUP meetings by the proposers of this scheme is that we will be rewarded with two seats at the Cabinet Table and thus have untold influence on the government of the United Kingdom. David Cameron seems to agree. He stated during his speech that
“...It's time for Northern Ireland to be brought
back into the mainstream of British politics.
Northern Ireland needs M Ps who have a real
prospect of holding office as ministers in a
Westminster government. That's what a dynamic
new political force of Conservatives and Unionists
offers – a revival of real democracy across the
United Kingdom.”
Such a suggestion, when canvassed at a UUP Executive meeting a month previously had not been universally accepted as likely. At that time, it had been pointed out by a delegate from Ballymoney, that some people were living on cloud cuckoo land. In the early 1970s we had 10 MPs, all of whom took the Conservative whip. We had even been rewarded with two Junior positions in government but had never made it to the Cabinet Table. Furthermore when Heath decided he wanted rid of Stormont he prorogued the parliament without a second thought. Why would the Conservatives give the UUP such massive influence when we have only one MP.
Recent events, however, indicate that non-representation at Westminster need not be a bar to Cabinet membership. Gordon Brown recognised that he needed Peter Mandelson at the table. He simply placed him in the House of Lords and then appointed him to the Cabinet. Would David Cameron do that for the Ulster Unionists? David Trimble might be an option. He is already in the Lords and he has also joined the Conservative Party.
The discussions between the parties are being undertaken by a team from either side. When the leadership was asked at an Executive Committee meeting who was negotiating on the UUP's behalf, we were told that this information was classified and not for the consumption of the general membership. Fortunately it eventually filtered out from various journalists.
The question which remains to be answered is what exactly is the nature of this agreement. Sir Reg Empey promised in his Conference speech that the final outcome will be known by January. It is clearly more than an electoral pact. Ulster Unionist candidates will in the future have to also have the endorsement of the local members of the Conservative Party. This might be achieved by holding joint meetings of UUP and Conservative Party members to select candidates. If this method were to be chosen, then the Ulster Unionist Party would have ceased to exist as an independent political party. And the danger is that once the UUP is inextricably linked to the Conservatives and when that party collapses at the polls in Northern Ireland as it did in 1993 then this time it will almost certainly take the UUP with it.
The joint UUP/Conservative working party is currently working upon the marrying of manifestos and the branding of candidates. They will work out joint logos and complementary policies. What the leadership is up to traduces the notion of a truly independent UUP.
There is already now an Election Committee in place at Party headquarters to oversee and vet all candidates for the UUP in future elections. It will, presumably, be at that stage that the Conservatives will come into play. Under the new scheme, once the UUP members in a particular constituency have decided who they want, then a committee made up of four Ulster Unionists and four English or Northern Irish Conservatives will decide whether to accept or reject the candidate.
Nevertheless one can have nothing but sympathy for Sir Reg Empey as he attempts to retain the relevancy of the UUP. In the last few years the DUP have stolen almost all of the UUP policies. They have also drafted significant numbers of UUP members into the ranks of the DUP where they have been given positions of considerable influence. The DUP is currently being steered through troubled waters by UUP captains following UUP charts. Throw a stone at any group of influential DUP members and you will very possibly hit an Ulster Unionist. The annoying thing for the UUP is that this strategy by the DUP has been so successful with the electorate.
When Sir Reg took over the reins at Cunningham House we had suffered the greatest electoral collapse in our history, being almost wiped out at Westminster. Only Lady Sylvia Hermon remains and she, incidentally, is undoubtedly deeply unhappy at the Cameron/Empey project. At local government level we lost about 15% of our council seats and saw our popular vote drop still further. The UUP had to retain its relevancy.
Clearly Sir Reg and the leadership have decided that the Tory option is the most efficacious method of achieving this end. Unfortunately it runs contrary to the entire ethos of the Party going back over a century. The Ulster Unionist Party's strength was that it was a broad church. It was a coalition of right and left, urban and rural, upper, middle and working class. As it moved away from its more fundamentalist Protestant roots it was starting to broaden its appeal even further. The electoral debacle of 2006 was possibly inevitable. But there were signs that the position of the UUP was improving. For the leadership to lose their nerve now is a tragedy.
The Ulster Unionist Party has been the Party of the Union for over 100 years. Its position within British Ulster has been secure in the past because it retained a relevancy to its constituency. This new project which David Cameron and Sir Reg Empey urged at the UUP Conference on Saturday 6 December will undermine that relevancy.
In his speech David Cameron used that oft quoted Churchill phrase, '...the bonds of affection between Great Britain and the people of Northern Ireland have been tempered by fire.' And this is undoubtedly correct.
But to paraphrase Winston Churchill, this new proposal may not be the end for Ulster Unionism, but it may well be the beginning of the end.
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