Robbie Butler and John Stewart joint ticket for UUP leadership mooted - but it's unclear who would take top job
A joint ticket of liberal unionist MLAs could keep the party on the path started by Doug Beattie, with Robbie Butler and John Stewart expected to put their names forward to the membership for the upcoming leadership vote.
Doug Beattie has ruled himself out of the race to lead the Ulster Unionist Party, despite a last ditch attempt by some supporters to encourage him to run again.
It now appears that Robbie Butler and John Stewart will make some form of joint bid, although who would take the top job remains unclear.
The party is currently operating a media blackout as it attempts to calm things down after their leader’s sudden exit. Therefore neither Robbie Butler nor John Stewart have confirmed their intentions – but the News Letter understands the pair will go forward together, and between them they hope to fill the top jobs of leader and deputy leader of the troubled party.
A lot rests on whether the current deputy leader Robbie Butler feels he can take on the role, as he has a young family.
John Stewart has recently surprised many inside and outside the party with his performance in the recent Westminster election – narrowing the gap with Sammy Wilson in East Antrim.
UUP sources have said that Mr Stewart was frustrated that he hadn’t received more support from the party centrally, and has become more outspoken in recent months in party group meetings.
It isn’t clear exactly where a Butler-Stewart leadership would take the party – but it seems unlikely that it would result in any radical change and certainly wouldn’t result in a move to the right. The party’s elected representatives – particularly at Stormont and Westminster – are broadly comfortable with the direction the party has gone under Doug Beattie.
Robbie Butler wears his Christian faith on his sleeve, but he won’t attempt to impose personal religious views on the party.
He hasn’t said a lot publicly about some of the big issues facing unionism – such as the Windsor Framework.
An appearance at a House of Lords committee on the arrangements earlier this year gave a bit of an insight into the Lagan Valley MLA’s thinking on the matter. He wants an end to divergence with Great Britain, but appears to accept that the Windsor Framework structures are here to stay.
He told peers “We have the threat of divergence looming over us, which we want to get rid of. We absolutely need to deal with that once and for all”.
But he also said people needed to be convinced that Northern Ireland isn’t a burden because of the deal, and said that could be done by “changing attitudes and recognising or developing upstream systems for horizon scanning”.
He also said the voice of businesses has been squeezed by “both those who pursued Brexit passionately and those who pursued the NI protocol passionately” – attempting to chart a course somewhere between the DUP and Alliance.
Whoever takes on the role of leader – there is a broad feeling among its MLAs that the party needs reform, and it appears that Robbie Butler and John Stewart’s candidature would make a showdown with at least some of the party officers inevitable. However, as the dispute was not primarily driven by policy differences, many of the officers who had become hostile to Doug Beattie would likely be very comfortable with either a Butler or Stewart leadership.
A new leadership team would also be able to appoint their own picks to the party officers, which would be crucial in any attempts to reform structures which one source told the News Letter might have been suitable in the 1950s, but not for the party’s current situation.
The instability in the party was prompted by the resignation of Doug Beattie earlier this week, after an ongoing clash with the party officers.
There have been various anonymous briefings to the media giving varying accounts of the events that led to Mr Beattie quitting.
However, what is clear is that the relationship between the leader and the majority of the party officers was broken – and many of the issues involved were entirely separate from the traditionalist versus liberal divide that has bedevilled the Ulster Unionists for years.
Some of those who turned against Mr Beattie were former allies, and supported his broader vision for the party.
Mike Nesbitt, currently serving as health minister, has also been mentioned. It appears unlikely that he would run against Robbie Butler and John Stewart, particularly if an arrangement could be reached in which he continued as the health minister.