I was forced out of new alliance - Tory
JEFFREY Peel, who dramatically resigned from the UUP-Conservative joint committee with a blistering attack on the UUP, claimed he had been forced out of the new alliance.
The Conservatives last night disciplined Mr Peel, suspending him from his post as area officer for the party, after he claimed the UUP had refused to abide by Tory hopes of creating a new cross-community political force.
Mr Peel, who stirred a UUP backlash last summer when he described the Orange Order as a "backward-looking, history-obsessed parish pump society", walked the plank yesterday after effectively being frozen out by both the UUP and his own party as a "scapegoat", he said.
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Senior Ulster Unionist members privately welcomed Mr Peel's removal from the Conservative and Unionist alliance but DUP leader Peter Robinson wasted little time in attacking the "debacle", which comes just a week after the new grouping was unveiled.
Speaking to the News Letter, Mr Peel said that the Conservative Party needed to have more input than the UUP, but that the Ulster Unionists had not been willing to accept a role as junior partners.
"It was made clear to me after the press conference last week that I wouldn't be welcome on the joint committee meetings so even if I had continued on the joint committee, we would have been in the situation where I would have been a joint committee member but couldn't attend meetings," he said.
"To all intents and purposes, I was removed in that I agreed that I wouldn't attend the meetings, but, having thought about it, and following another (UUP) press release where they have used the long Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force name, that was the final straw for me."
The staunch atheist, who is chairman of the UK-wide Conservative Humanist Association, wanted to see the Conservative Party steer a more secular course in Northern Ireland, which he believed would appeal to both sides of the community.
However, UUP members of the committee were concerned that this would risk losing party's core vote.
Last week, Mr Peel was involved in a heated argument with UUP members on the fringes of the new electoral alliance's launch over branding for the new group.
UUP treasurer Mark Cosgrove, who sat on the joint committee with Mr Peel, said: "Jeff's views were genuinely not compatible with mainstream pro-Union Northern Ireland political operation."
The UUP released a brief, terse response to Mr Peel's attack "noting" Mr Peel's comments and adding: "It is not our intention to become embroiled in a public spat with him, other than to say that the comments he makes about branding and logo are inaccurate, since both are still the topics of ongoing debate within the joint committee.
"Mr Peel is a member of the Conservative Party and at this stage this is a matter for them to deal with."
Mr Peel, who works as a marketing consultant, said that he hoped the Conservatives did not "get rid of him," adding that he "has a lot to offer" to the party.
The former Conservative councillor in England who ran the Northern Ireland Tories website until Conservative central office took control on Wednesday.
UUP Health Minister Michael McGimpsey said that the UUP had always been a “broad church”, including Labour-supporting elements, which had supported the setting up of the NHS when 60 years ago the Tories were opposed to it.
The DUP has consistently been a thorn in the side of the new UUP-Tory alliance, but yesterday DUP leader Peter Robinson claimed that he was “sad” that the new group had “turned in on itself”.
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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