Cameron will regret inept handling of Ulster issues
ONE of the highlights of the week at Westminster is Prime Minister's questions.
It always disappoints me that over the last five years my name has never been drawn to be called to ask a question, nevertheless I always enjoy the spectacle. The half hour from 12 to 12:30pm every Wednesday is the House of Commons at its rawest.
The best description I have heard of Prime Minister's questions was during a debate when Dawn Butler, a black Labour member, was talking about the problem of anti-social behaviour in her constituency and how easy it was for young people to be dragged into gangs. She told a story of how she had come across two gangs which were facing each other down.
The two leaders were standing almost face to face. One was shouting insults at the other. The other started jabbing his finger at the man who was shouting. They both got redder in the face. The gang members behind them, who she described as mostly white males, all joined in shouting, pointing, jeering and yelling insults. When she had everyone's attention, she dropped the bombshell, she lowered her voice and her head and almost whispered, "before I knew it I had joined in with them and was doing the same thing". All the Labour women sitting around her (they all gather around a female speaker in some kind of feminist bonding or support group), looked appalled and one of them gasped loud enough to be heard around the chamber "Oh Dawn". She turned round and looked at her friend and replied "well why wouldn't I after all it was Prime Minister's questions."
The sessions recently have been getting rowdier and nastier. David Cameron in particular appears less composed and sure of himself than was the case some months ago. No doubt he is now feeling the pressure as the opinion polls show that the Conservative lead is diminishing and a General Election victory for his party is no longer certain.
Increasingly the pundits and even some of the senior figures in the Conservative Party are talking of a hung parliament.
In this context David Cameron must be kicking himself for listening to the rather naive advice of his Northern Ireland spokesman Owen Patterson to bank on the UUP and the local Tories to deliver vital seats in Northern Ireland. This has not been a good week for the "New Force" and the strain on this political marriage is beginning to show.
First of all the Conservatives caused great embarrassment to the UUP when they voted to continue discrimination against Protestant recruits to the police by backing yet another extension of the 50/50 rule. Poor Reg Empey had to grin and bear it as the Tories slapped him about the face on an issue which rankles deeply with the unionist population. The naive Owen Paterson failed to understand the anger which refusal letters arriving through the door of well qualified Protestant applicants cause.
It wasn't long before the UUP once again found themselves at odds with Cameron on the devolution of policing and justice. The huffy response of the UUP to his entreaties has clearly angered many of the UUP supporters who do not appreciate the reckless way in which that party has been prepared to destabilise Northern Ireland with its unprincipled opposition to something which the UUP signed up to seven years ago. It is especially ironic that they agreed to the very thing they opposed last Tuesday in far worse conditions. In 2003, they signed up to a deal which would have put Sinn Fein in charge of the police at a time when the IRA was still operational, Sinn Fein was not even supporting the police and the Assembly was so dysfunctional it had already collapsed twice.
Then the former communications director of the UUP admitted that before their party conference they had tried to persuade David Cameron to change parts of his speech to the UUP faithful and he refused to alter a word. Added to this is the as yet undecided fate of the UUP candidate for South Antrim whose views on homosexuality have angered the Notting Hill wing of the liberal Tories to the point where it is clear they will demand he either grovel or be dropped. In one week the myth that the link up with the Tories will put the UUP in a position where it can influence national policy has been exposed. Far from being policy drivers the UUP have been humiliated as poodles on the Tory lead.
Despite the UUP claims that they will not be bribed or bullied, their willingness to sacrifice two unionist seats in South Belfast and Fermanagh South Tyrone rather than agree a single unionist candidate, shows just how willing they are to be both bribed and bullied. The price of Conservative Party cash to fight the election is that all 18 seats be fought. It seems the UUP are prepared to hand what could be unionist seats to the SDLP and the abstentionist Sinn Fein in return for a lucrative election fund.
Surely a better strategy would have been to maximise the unionist representation at Westminster and then drive a hard bargain for our support. A block of 12 unionists MPs after the next election might give Northern Ireland substantial bargaining power in the event of a hung parliament. David Cameron might need those votes and might yet live to regret his alliance with the UUP and his inept handling of the electoral realities in Northern Ireland which will hand two seats to anti-unionist pro-socialist parties.
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Weather for Belfast
Thursday 24 May 2012
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