Owen Polley: Threat to Northern Ireland’s place in the UK was only briefly explored at NI Tory hustings

The party has a small but committed set of activists in Northern Ireland, whose fortunes have fluctuated over the years.

During the 2010 general election, candidates standing as ‘Conservatives and Unionists’ came close to winning seats at Westminster as part of an electoral pact with the Ulster Unionist Party, but more recently the NI Tories attracted few votes.

The Northern Ireland Protocol signed by Boris Johnson made this province one of the most prominent and controversial issues that any new Conservative leader would face, but the candidates were not quizzed closely in the Culloden about the details of their plans to thwart the Irish Sea border.

There were questions about Conservative central office providing ‘support’ and ‘funding’ for the local party’s campaigns.

There were calls to re-establish power-sharing and accusations that democracy was being “held hostage by one side or the other”.

And there were various lengthy expositions of pet issues that exercised members of the audience.

The two candidates appeared separately, rather than facing the same questions together, so Mr Sunak did not even have to answer the trickier and more direct points about the Union, the protocol and the government’s tendency to treat Northern Ireland as a place apart.

The more forceful contributions were directed only at Ms Truss.

The Conservative Party has enjoyed limited success in the province.

But when it articulated a clear message to voters here, it centred on Northern Ireland playing a full role in mainstream British politics, the national economy and other aspects of UK life.

The Northern Ireland Protocol, which was agreed by a Conservative prime minister, demolished this vision for the province, in the short-term at least.

We were cut off from the UK internal market, the EU was effectively granted authority over our economy and Article 6 of the Act of Union, which stated that the whole country should be “on the same footing” for trade, was, in the words of the courts, “subjugated”.

You would think that this situation would be an overwhelming concern for local Tories.

It undermines the worldview that many of them hold, which is bound up with ideas about Northern Ireland being integrated with the rest of the United Kingdom, as well as damaging their chances of making an electoral breakthrough.

By rights, they should be furious with the government and their party’s leadership, but that wasn’t the impression that came through at the members’ hustings.

Indeed, at one point, after an activist accused Boris Johnson of lying, the audience applauded Liz Truss’s description of him as “an excellent prime minister”.

As you would expect from a gathering of centre-right politicos, there were questions about the benefits system, tax policies and the deficit.

The Tory party in Northern Ireland is rightly proud of engaging with national issues, but the central fact that Northern Ireland has been ostracised from the rest of the country, partly because of the actions of the government, was only explored briefly.

Indeed, Mr Sunak and Ms Truss were forced to make their strongest points about the protocol, which they both claim they will “fix”, in response to queries about the future of Stormont.

While activists implicitly accused the DUP of ‘huffing’ or ‘holding people to ransom’, the candidates pointed out that the Irish Sea border was chiefly to blame for the current lack of a power-sharing executive.

It is encouraging, to a degree, that both the Conservative hopefuls are committed to pushing the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill through parliament.

Ms Truss identified a number of ‘key issues’ in the legislation that she claims are not up for compromise.

They included important aspects of United Kingdom sovereignty, like unimpeded trade, British regulations in Northern Ireland and the supremacy of our courts.

Mr Sunak was also direct in his pro-Union statements.

However, there are legitimate concerns that the candidates have not ruled out some form of negotiated settlement with the European Union, that many powers in the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill are discretionary and that green and red lanes will still restrict some goods.

Unfortunately, we are no nearer to definitive answers on those subjects after the Belfast hustings.

• Owen Polley writes a column for the News Letter every Monday