Burrows turns UUP's fire on Alliance - branding them 'divided, desperate and drifting towards outright nationalism'
Alliance voters have been let down by their party’s record at Stormont, which is also divided and drifting towards “outright nationalism”, a UUP MLA has told his party conference.
Jon Burrows set out his vision for the Ulster Unionist Party’s future and took aim at political opponents, with a particular focus on Naomi Long’s party – and said the UUP would continue to be a sensible voice for Northern Ireland.
The North Antrim MLA told the party faithful, gathered in South Belfast, that Alliance are “folding under scrutiny”. He slammed comments by leading Alliance figures which suggested that a protest outside the justice minister’s family home was linked to comments in the Assembly chamber by rival politicians.
“It’s frankly completely disingenuous to try to link the scrutiny that we’re providing in the chamber to those protests”, Mr Burrows said, arguing that it was an attempt to stop scrutiny.
“They are divided, they are desperate, and I think they are drifting towards outright nationalism. Their voters are very good people, but they have been let down by their party.
“The party is in my view incompetent in its ministries – it has let down victims, it has let down farmers. Naomi Long’s leadership of justice has been disastrous. All the agencies in the criminal justice system have persistent problems that have got worse.
“The justice system is soft, and getting softer. It’s slow, and getting slower. A culture has emerged where the perpetrator is given more rights than the victim and the innocent members of the public”, he said.
Mr Burrows said the risk to the union is that Northern Ireland and Stormont fail – and the Ulster Unionist Party is the “greatest bulwark against a united Ireland” due to its unwavering support for the institutions.
He said the party had used its head and not its heart when it came to Brexit, and would do the same with regard to proposals to quit the European Convention on Human Rights – which he described as a “pitfall” for unionism.
He said to leave would create “another battle with Irish republicanism, another battle with our government, and another border in the Irish Sea around rights”.
The UUP man also said that Northern Ireland’s place in the UK provided it with security from international terrorism and organised crime.