Conservatives now enter last chance saloon
SO it’s back to the future for the Conservatives: back to a title — Conservative and Unionist — that was first used at the time of the original Home Rule Crisis at the end of the 19th century.
I’m old enough to remember a time when unionist associations here were described as Conservative and Unionist, when Ulster Unionists served in Conservative governments, when Ulster Unionists were members of the Conservative’s National Union Executive Committee and when Conservative Party leaders sent congratulatory messages to the Ulster Unionist Council at the end of General Elections.
What does Lord Feldman’s announcement mean for the existing local Conservatives?
Well, this is the present introduction from their website: “Welcome to the website of the Northern Ireland Conservatives. We’re passionate about Northern Ireland and we know you are too.
“Here you can find out who we are, what we stand for and the issues we care about. You can also join us to make Northern Ireland a better place to live for everyone.”
Yet in a few months’ time the NI Conservatives will exist no longer.
More significantly, perhaps, the Conservative Party itself has taken a step back, opting instead for “a new political party”.
Lord Feldman says that “we want to move past the politics of the peace process to a more normal state of affairs where everyone in Northern Ireland has the opportunity to vote for a modern, centre-right, pro-Union party”.
It’s hard to avoid the question of what he regarded the Conservative Party in Northern Ireland to have been since 1989, when he now seems to be suggesting that it wasn’t modern, centre-right and pro-Union, but was “encumbered by the conflict and divisions of Northern Ireland’s past”.
The other problem, of course, is that this new entity is clearly his second choice: since his first choice — a new party combining the Conservatives and UUP — was rejected by Tom Elliott.
This has forced him to close down the Conservative Party here and replace it with something which has links with the Conservative Party but isn’t, in fact, the Conservative Party.
And this, in turn, means that the new party will be greeted with a blunt question: “Aren’t you only doing this because you couldn’t get elected if you were regarded as fully-fledged Conservatives?”
The new party has three obvious hunting grounds for voters: increasingly disillusioned members/supporters of the UUP, non-voters from the pro-Union community and that 20 per cent or so of Roman Catholics who supposedly support the Union.
That won’t be easy.
I suspect that most of the disillusioned UUP will simply shift to the DUP or Alliance.
If non-voters weren’t attracted by “Conservatives” I’m not sure they will be attracted by something that is the Conservatives under another name.
And pro-Union Roman Catholics may be put off by the use of ‘unionist’ in the title.
If the ‘new’ party is to survive then it will need a new and articulate team of spokesmen and candidates: and it really must be very careful not to become a refugee camp for disgruntled and electorally unsuccessful former members of the UUP.
But the ultimate test will be the next round of elections.
For if it doesn’t breach the eight per cent barrier and start winning seats it won’t be given a second chance to get it right.
The brutal reality is that this really does represent the last — slightly desperate — throw of the dice for ‘Conservatives’ in Northern Ireland.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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