Steady as she goes no option for weakened UUP
LAST week I urged the two contenders for the Ulster Unionist leadership to talk - and talk they did, but not in the way I suggested.
Instead of a businesslike tte--tte to identify common ground, we have had megaphone diplomacy. The normally cool, collected and manly Tom Elliott seems to have suffered a fit of the vapours after listening to his pugnacious rival Basil McCrea challenge him on the radio.
"When I heard what Basil was saying about me, I had to pull the car into a lay-by," Elliott confessed. He had better carry smelling salts because, unless he and McCrea can reach a speedy compromise, he can expect more of the same.
This sort of knockabout is amusing, but Northern Ireland's oldest political party badly needs a coronation which would allow Reg Empey, its gentlemanly but unlucky 13th leader, to hand over to an agreed successor.
The UUP is in extremely poor shape and could be near its end as a political force. It ran Northern Ireland for most of the state's history but was overtaken by the DUP in 2005, its centenary year. Despite a blip in last year's European election, when Jim Nicholson retained his seat, the UUP decline has continued ever since. It is fast becoming a marginal force in Ulster politics. Under Empey's watch the party's only MP, Lady Sylvia Hermon, resigned in protest against the party's ill-fated link up with the Tories. UCUNF may have paid the cash-strapped UUP's election expenses but it scored the party nul points in terms of seats.
That means that if ever there are problems within the uneasy Tory/Liberal coalition in Westminster, the UUP will be in no position to exert influence. The DUP and the SDLP, not to mention Alliance and Hermon, all have cards to play at Westminster, but the UUP hold nothing in their hand. This dismal position didn't result from bad luck, but from a collective failure of leadership. It is a comprehensive indictment of the way things are done.
Empey should have resigned straight away to give good time for a new leader to make his mark before next year's assembly election, but he is a temporiser who tries to take people with him. As a result he consulted the leadership cadre who had guided the party to this disastrous pass. They prevailed on him to conduct a pointless review which has strung things out until now.
His long goodbye means the party is conducting its leadership contest far too close to an electoral contest for comfort.
However, we are where we are and the choice now is between Basil McCrea and Tom Elliott. Elliott is a tremendously decent man, brighter and more liberal on many issues than his media image suggests. He is a unifier who carefully balances the interests of the party's various factions and steers a steady course.
The problem is that steady as she goes in the current context means managing decline. Doing the same thing as before, but hoping for different results, was how Einstein defined insanity.
McCrea is also high risk. He would shake things up and be inclined to ignore any squeals of protest from vested interests. Heads would roll in the assembly party. McCrea’s vision is of a modern and independent minded unionism which would put clear blue water between itself and the DUP.
Nobody knows for sure how many voters are ready for that, but if the contributions to the News Letter’s Union 2021 campaign are anything to go by, there is considerable untapped support out there.
This brings us back to Elliott’s dismay when McCrea criticised his antiquated views on the GAA and homosexuality. Elliott had said that he, as a matter of principle, would avoid GAA and Gay Pride events if he was leader of unionism.
In doing so he put himself in the last century. As McCrea pointed out, in those comments which so shocked Elliott that he had to pull over to a lay-by to compose himself, Peadar Heffron, a PSNI officer wounded by dissidents, was the captain of the PSNI’s GAA team. The GAA, which once refused membership to “crown forces” now welcomes them and is the largest participant and spectator sport in the province.
There is also a flourishing Gay Police Officers Association which supports the Belfast and Londonderry Gay Pride demonstrations. Would Elliott’s delicate principles stretch to meeting such officers and hearing their concerns? Would he, for that matter, accept their votes or do anything to win their support at the hustings?
If he is not prepared to face such questions without taking a fit of the vapours, then he is not the man to lead his party into the 21st century.
The best hope of the UUP surviving as an independent political force is a gentleman’s agreement where McCrea leads the party and Elliott heads its ministerial team.
Failing that, the best option is a McCrea victory pure and simple.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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