Best way forward is link-up with DUP - David McNarry
UUP MLA David McNarry
FOLLOWING several successive election reverses, a debate has been going on for some time behind closed doors within the Ulster Unionist Party on the future direction of the party.
In this context, the UUP leader tasked me with having discussions with the DUP on areas of mutual concern, and on how our two parties might work closer together better in the future for the benefit of overall unionism.
Given then that the opportunities shone bright and the genuineness appeared honourable, the talks extended into top-table personnel involvement with representatives drawn from both parties.
This represented what might be called the two-party future for unionism, satisfying a demand the electorate have often articulated on the doorstep of having greater unionist unity.
Such an approach would have the ultimate potential to face the electorate with a joint unionist programme, ensuring maximum transfer between candidates of both parties and operating in the Assembly as a single political designation.
This solution would have left both the DUP and UUP as separate legal entities with their own rules and procedures, but joined in a constructive political alliance for the benefit of unionism.
In a sense, both unionist parties need each other and are stronger working together than tearing each other apart.
In all of this, because I was acting for the UUP leader and reporting back to him on a full and regular basis, I, not unnaturally, believed I understood what was in the party leader’s mind.
The alternative to this, often advocated by rejected candidates of the former electoral Conservative link within the UUP, was to move towards becoming an opposition, surrender ministerial office and oppose the Northern Ireland Executive at every turn, allegedly offering the electors an alternative administration.
This seems to me to be rationally flawed.
First, no other party wants to go into opposition in Stormont and it would, therefore, never be possible to form a cross-community government on this basis.
Second, the negativity which this opposition model would inevitably mean is clearly against the wishes of the electorate who want to see parties working together for the good of Northern Ireland, as they made perfectly plain in the last Assembly election.
Like most Ulster Unionists I am pragmatic, fair and rational. That is why I believe that the talks I was engaged in, on the orders of the party leader, were the only rational way forward.
What I was doing was first for the good of the country, secondly for the good of unionism, and third for the good of the Ulster Unionist Party.
I was in no way a personal beneficiary of the talks. I was doing my duty and as, I always strive to do, I was doing it conscientiously.
It is up to Ulster Unionists and the public to decide if I have been treated fairly for my efforts.
David McNarry is an independent MLA for Strangford
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Weather for Belfast
Tuesday 29 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 12 C to 21 C
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