North Down councillor: I am quitting the Ulster Unionist Party – a party I came back to Northern Ireland to support

I was 19 when I voted on the Belfast Agreement.

In the years of watching local news up to the referendum I remember my sympathy for the Ulster Unionist Party as the reasonable people in the room: Trimble doing his best, assailed on all sides, hung out to dry. I got snagged on politics and not being able to shake it, moved home to North Down a decade ago to get involved.

It was natural I sought out the Ulster Unionists, and I stood and was elected as a UUP councillor in 2014.

Things were promising. The UUP seemed in a good position to address the familiar challenges facing political unionism – low morale, bad PR, a reputation for dourness, difficulty reaching voters beyond the base. There was a clear intention to become the largest party in Northern Ireland and a route to achieving this. We even had a couple of decent elections in a row, and it was a highlight to see Danny Kinahan elected to Westminster, who set about building relationships with Labour and Tory MPs from day one.

I resigned from the UUP this week, reluctantly concluding they can’t or won’t meet these challenges. But the challenges for political unionism remain, and for the welfare of everybody living here it’s imperative they are addressed urgently and capably.

Like any movement unionism is a coalition bringing together disparate groups. To those different groups unionism can mean very different things. In Northern Ireland in particular, unionism has become entwined as an identity as much as a political preference. I grew up being told about ‘parity of esteem’ and ‘two communities’.

You are brought up one way and then just told that’s what you are. In all of this it’s become difficult to cut down to the basics of what, in the end, unionism actually is.

In my view the stripped-down heart of unionism should be an answer to a simple question: whether the United Kingdom should persist, with Northern Ireland in it.

The case for the Union is overwhelming. Other contributors to this newspaper have made the salient points on the economic benefits of our place in the UK. Our standard of living, quite literally, would become that of a developing nation overnight if the UK were to cut us off. The economy of the Republic of Ireland could not and would not bear that burden.

This can’t be, and isn’t, the sole argument for our place in the UK. It would not be clever to be rolling out this line in a generation’s time. Nonetheless, as a starting point, it is unanswerable and should settle the question for a generation.

Thousands of voters in my constituency will eschew anything they construe as tribalism, preferring arguments for well-functioning schools, hospitals and a functioning economy. On the back of the economic argument alone, they ought to be the most committed unionists imaginable.

They would not be ‘neutral’ on their children’s future. If they are not unionists yet, it’s because the case for it has been insufficiently made. A better presentation of unionism needs to me made. If such voters can be convinced that the answer is to be part of a welcoming UK that’s big enough to include all our identities, we can move us past the constant constitutional arguments.

The key for unionism in winning the argument for good is moving past construing it as an identity – since to win must then involve beating others and indeed denying their identities.

You are in zero-sum headcounts, which of course alienates the voters you need. It is far stronger to focus on the facts first, because the facts on the ground are unionist. If this is achieved, you move to securing the Union, and people across Northern Ireland can express themselves culturally however they like.

How appropriately British that would be. There’s no place in the world more culturally accommodating than the UK.

Building this kind of consensus should be very much in the UUP’s comfort zone, ‘union of people’ and all that. Yet there’s a sense that after a string of disappointing elections, the UUP have become disappointed with the typical unionist voter. They have dropped the goal altogether of leading unionism, content to be a smaller, progressive unionist alternative. Alliance with flags, if you will.

This abandonment is a misstep, borne out of desperation. It may garner them likes on social media from those unlikely to vote for them anyway, but it will continue to alienate swathes of unionist voters and attract few new ones.

Beyond platitudes about togetherness, the public does not know what the UUP stands for and I’m not sure the UUP does either. Worse, they are heading into elections with no strategy or messaging . In my own area, decisions on candidate selection were so unprofessional, and personal behaviour so beneath what you’d expect from Ulster Unionists, as to convince me the party couldn’t be helped.

Other candidates can speak as to their treatment, but I will say that – for example – in consecutive elections female candidates have been encouraged to stand to boost the party’s image. Spending their time and money on the stress of an election, the party have assured them they have a chance, while knowing there is in some cases little prospect of them winning. I think voters see through such tactics.

I have served the party as best as I can. I was elected to serve my constituents and will do what’s in the best interest of everyone whom I have the honour to represent. The UUPs laudable slogan is ‘Country before Party’. In that spirit I’m leaving them to better serve the good people of Ards and North Down and making the case for our place in the UK.