David McNarry: The DUP should re-brand or align with other unionists to form new party

So it is important at a time when unionists are rocking from a bad election result, compounded by concerns over the Boris Johnson Brexit Betrayal.

Reading Ben Lowry’s consummate Saturday column (‘After a grim 2019, unionism faces big challenges in 2020s’, December 28) was a welcome resume of the dilemmas facing unionism. Not that I agree with all he writes!

The article, which highlights the enormous difficulties inside unionism and its voting decline across four consecutive elections, will please the luvvie defeatist lobby circumnavigating around unionism.

Unionism does not need an ear bashing pointing out what it already knows, rather it needs constructive criticism and remedies.

The article is accurate in its articulation of where exactly unionism sits amid the chicanery levelled against the Union.

The truth as Ben bluntly states is that unionism is under siege from all fronts.

Unionists are faced with circumstances which were not previously envisaged. Unionism has been caught napping without a plan B.

The point made in the article is unionism cannot afford to relax or be found wanting again.

It is only by adapting to the current circumstances that unionism will ever regain its influence.

Bruising it has been but it does not need to be a lasting crisis.

There is a danger of knuckleheads talking everyone into recrimination.

Undoubtedly the DUP must consider re-branding, or forming an alignment with other unionists and emerging as a new party.

Otherwise, as is an undertone in the article, unionism will be laid bare.

David McNarry, Former Ulster Unionist Party and later Ukip MLA at Stormont, Comber