NI Tories need to spell out position
I’M presently completing a dissertation on ‘The Conservative Party and Northern Ireland: 1921-2001’ and have been following with some interest the exchange of views between your columnist Alex Kane and various members and supporters of the local Conservatives.
My view is that Irwin Armstrong (Move by NI Tories is not a ‘step back’, February 10) protests just a little too much. He chides Mr Kane for ‘predicting wrongly almost every development for the Conservative Party in Northern Ireland’, yet he doesn’t, in fact, counter, let alone contradict, the substance of Mr Kane’s analysis published on February 2.
Lord Feldman’s statement that there is the need for a ‘modern, centre-right, pro-Union party’ in NI does, indeed, beg the question of why he seems to believe that the Conservative Party, as presently constituted in NI, does not, has not and seemingly cannot fulfil that role.
Mr Kane is also right to argue that this ‘new party’ project represents Lord Feldman’s second choice option. Had the UUP responded positively to Lord Feldman’s original offer towards the end of 2011 then the NI Conservatives would have ceased to exist and would, in effect, have been swallowed up by the very much larger remnant of the UUP.
Lord Trimble hinted as much when he was quoted as saying that the UUP had been ‘stupid’ to reject the offer.
I’m slightly confused by Mr Armstrong’s contention that ‘local members instigated the changes which are now taking place. The latest Conservative development here is part of a long term strategy...’ How so? Between 2007 and 2010 the local Conservatives supported the UCUNF political/electoral arrangements with the UUP, an arrangement which didn’t benefit either party.
At the 2011 Assembly elections the NI Conservatives were instructed not to contest: and in the council elections held in 2010 they barely registered. In the final few weeks of 2011 local Conservatives, including some of their most senior members and spokespeople, were urging the UUP to accept Lord Feldman’s offer. So, as I say, I’m not sure how Mr Armstrong can claim that this latest development represents the outworking of a long term strategy. At best it couldbe described as a fourth or even fifth option.
Given the fact that Mr Armstrong is chairman of the NI Conservatives I can appreciate his desire to contest the thrust or otherwise of Alex Kane’s analysis. Yet it is hard to deny Alex Kane’s concluding remark that ‘the brutal reality is that this does represent the last slightly desperate throw of the dice for Conservatives in Northern Ireland’. Perhaps Mr Armstrong should just ignore Alex Kane and, instead, make clear to voters and others what it is the Conservative Party stands for and how this latest development will be successful when so many other developments since 1992 have failed.
David Leemon
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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