Letter: ​If North Antrim fails to respond in our hour of need, the outlook is grim

I don’t think the gravity of the election result in North Antrim can be emphasised enough.

Once again North Antrim is a sounding board taking the heartbeat of Ulster. It will measure our political and religious strength.

Does its ailing body contain enough life to be nursed back to health?

Does this constituency understand the responsibility that has been placed upon them, and will they act on it?

This has serious ramifications for all of us.

Jim Allister could be offering all of us one final opportunity to claw our way back from the brink of disaster. Judging by the last election result in North Antrim when the Ulster Unionists topped the poll and Alliance won a seat, the omens are not good. We can only hope that this was a well-informed electorate firing a shot across the bows of failing unionist politicians, and not a declaration of intent for the future. I’m not encouraged.

If this is a declaration of intent it is an indication that the unionist community is in its death throes. That Alliance won a seat is an indication of a weak pulse, and the electorate should be on life support. There was a time Alliance disguised its nationalist sympathies, but now it’s quite brazen and makes no effort to hide them.

The good ship ‘Union’ is sinking, and we need Jim Allister to plug the gaps and shore it up. North Antrim has the responsibility, if the will is there, to supply him with the tools to do the job. He can’t make bricks without straw, but the electorate can supply him with that, by voting. To do that they will have to demonstrate they still have the discernment and the determination they have exercised in the past.

That mindset is being put to the test. Does that raw spirit still drive their engine, or has it been reduced in volume by secularism. Like the story of Gideon in the Bible, the Book their parent’s read, there is a sifting taking place, but we need more than three hundred to get Jim over the line.

If North Antrim fails to respond in our hour of need, the outlook is grim. It is carrying a heavy burden, for all of us. There was a time they would have understood that, but that generation has gone, does their spirit live on, in some capacity?

We’re about to find out, and the omens are not good. I hope N Antrim realises it is carrying a huge responsibility, and they shoulder it. If they don’t, they will leave Ulster staring into the abyss, and there may no way back.

Yes, it’s that serious.

Clive Maxwell, Bleary