DUP are the new pro-Agreement UUP…
BORE that I am, I’ve just been re-listening to Mark Devenport’s interview with Environment Minister Arlene Foster on Inside Politics at the weekend. Mark was questioning Foster on Finance Minister Peter Robinson’s statement that “without an agreed programme for government, there cannot be government.” Devenport suggested that since there is no threat to the existence of the government if the UUP and SDLP vote against the Programme for Government in the new year, the only way Stormont could collapse would be if the DUP withdrew from it. Certainly, the DUP would find it impossible to alone serve alongside Sinn Fein without UUP cover, and so it made it made sense for Foster to focus on the divisions within the UUP about whether to go into opposition or stay in power. She had to, as she couldn’t actually say what the DUP’s intentions are. But there must have been a few listeners smiling as she accused her former party of operating ‘internal opposition’ in the Executive and not abiding by rules set up for mandatory coalition when she was a member – as this perfectly described the tactics of her new party in the old executive. The DUP and UUP have almost swapped positions; the DUP becoming the champions of the rules of the Good Friday Agreement – and clearly very dependent on it – and the UUP threatening to quit the government in a strop – although no-one seriously believes they will.
Chekov and willowfield both make an erudite case for opposition. There is a need for such an opposition. I am most dubious, however, that the UUP can provide it.
The UUP are still very fond of power. Only a minority of the party seem keen on pulling out of the executive and setting up a true opposition. Those advoacting this also seem to be comming at it from differing positions, McNarry essentially proposing a position close to that of Jim Allister whilst others seem keen on the current ageement but with more competence.
The competence issue keeps coming up. Opposition is very difficult and I really doubt the UUP has the people able to do it well. It often requires considerable charm and charisma. I am certainly not one to talk but I do not think any of the current UUP politicians have the charm and charisma to carry it off. The voters would also need to be convinced the UUP could do a better job. I remember a UUP supporter (I forget who) telling me McGimpsey would be a great success at health. I am not trying a personal attack on McGimpsey but he has been far from a great success.
Then there remains the issue that people will feel that the UUP simply wish to replace the DUP in the current dictatorship. Since the UUP has been there before and done no better a job I am doubtful the electorate will rush to give them that mandate. People have long memories and as Malcolm Redfellow has observed in his scholarly contribution unionist splits have been to the right with the right then moving to the centre; never the left taking the position of the right.
If the new party do get going we might have a situtation where the UUP are in opposition offering to replace the DUP and the new party offering to replace the DUP and asking for a new agreement. In that case the new party might well be more interesting to voters. I accept that the new party may not get going well which would negate their danger. I still think, however, that the UUP are not really in a position to be a coherent opposition nor a viable alternative main unionist party.
The one thing which I guess they could do is completely reinvent themselves like Blair did with new Labour. This still has huge problems: the public seem a bit tired of spin, we come back to the leaders issue I mentioned earlier. Also the history of the UUP and spin doctors is very poor. To an extent Trimble tried the reinvention and spin doctor thing supported by the likes of Steven King. Although I always regarded him as a personable and pleasant individual; I always doubted not only King’s understanding of Northern Irish unionists but also the efficacy of that type of spin doctoring in a Northern Irish context.
In summary therefore I submit that chekov and willowfield propose a good idea (opposition) but one which the UUP are unwilling to try, would be incapable of doing well enough and that for them the time to try this has past. Clearly things can change (and change radically) but like the Liberals after Lloyd George I do suspect the UUP are consigned to the wilderness for the forseeable future. Do not worry, I am honest enough to come back and admit I was wrong if you do have a sudden resurgence.
If the best the only Ulster Unionist willing to frequently post here can do is say that he’s ‘happy’ with where Trimble took the party (1 MP etc etc), I think we can see why the DUP’s not overly worried about them. I repeat what I said above: if the UUP is ever to be politically effective again, rather than Shillers-style retreating into a tiny little room with the handful of folk you’re comfortable with, the UUP needs once again to have a catholic range of opinion within ii. Grown-up parties, Labour, the Tories, etc, have within them oodles of people who are profoundly uncomfortable with each other, but as they’re serious politicians seriously in pursuit of political power so as to deliver something for their voters, they suck it up.
Ok.
Taking up DC’s query on Alliance’s cultural position and responding to Willowfield’s point what might this scenario offer for the UUP.
1) Let’s say that Fianna Fail joins the European Liberal Democratic & Reform Party (they’ve already applied) and that the SDLP merge with Fianna Fail.
2) Suppose at the same time the existing ELDR members rebrand as the Liberal Party of Ireland and the Liberal Party in Northern Ireland, perhaps even aligned and resource sharing in similar fashion to the Irish Green Party and the Green Party in Northern Ireland.
If you have one Irish ELDR member with a traditional nationalist, rural and relatively socially conservative bias by default you may also have another Irish ELDR member with a more internationalist (pro Europe, pro-Commonwealth, perhaps pro-Nato), metropolitan and socially liberal bias; a party which might see its peers as the Post-Colonial Liberal Parties of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong and South Africa.
What attraction would a more overtly post-colonial Liberal Party hold for the next (or even present generation) of Lady Hermon’s and Alan McFarland’s and, if the Liberal Party of Northern Ireland does play that card, what part of the current Alliance (or if it’s all-Ireland, PD) vote does it forgo?
Anyone who has spent time with Australians, Saffers, Kiwis and Canadians knows you don’t need British Citizenship to be part of the wider community of what Churchill called the English speaking peoples. Could a Liberal Party of Ireland speak for the Planter, FF for the Gael, and the two be natural ELDR allies?
“the UUP needs once again to have a catholic range of opinion within it.”
Splendid idea! Do you think actual real live Catholics (pro-Union ones of course) might be included in the “catholic range of opinion”?
Maybe soon it’ll be able to boost its Catholic membership into even double figures…
Most surveys in the last 10 years have said that between 20%-25% of Catholics in NI are pro-Union…
Somewhere between 200,000 and 275,000 people. Roughly.
Of which the “for all of us” UUP have how many members? At best a dozen or two?
Turgon @ 07:39 PM:
Wow! “scholarly”: that’s not what they used to write on my essays at Trinity. More on the lines of “Knows little, but writes well.”
I think, though, that Turgon is giving us the proper steer here. The UUP has this tradition of being the “natural party of government” and it will take a long while to get over it (the Tories are barely there after three elections).
Then there is the dislocation of the activists and the voters. Activists make the party in their own image, and then have to market it to the electors. That’s almost always a situation prone to conflict and misrepresentation. Blair, Mandelson and their team managed it in the mid-1990s because the Labour Party was desperate for power. It looks (despite the sniping one sees on ConservativeHome and elsewhere) as if the same could be happening with the Cameroonies.
Whether they like it or not, the DUP and SF are now welded together for the duration of this Assembly. The electorate will then have to judge them as a double act. Presumably, at that stage, they may well also have to stand together behind an agreed “programme for government”. Did someone mention Belgium?
Meanwhile the UUP and SDLP (perhaps by then assimilated into arrangements with Tories and Fianna Fail?) are reduced to irrelevant me-too-ism … unless they have, separately or together, an alternative programme.
So, I see two ways that a administration and opposition could emerge.
First by natural causes: natural attrition through disgruntlements and frustrated-ambitions which leads to the creation of a bloc of nay-sayers in the Assembly. As I have previously implied, that is most likely to happen (in my thinking) on the right. Other contributors here (who are all nearer the situation than me) indicate that process is already under way.
Second, the development of the inner-cabinet of the DUP/SF politburo (which, again, already exists, so we are told) progressively excludes and alienates the lesser breeds without the law. Now, there’s some prickly characters involved, so I refer back to the previous paragraph.
The only third way is the least healthy: a one-party state, where the component factions find convenient differences for non-Assembly electioneering.
We are still early in the process of confidence-building in the Assembly. The fear is hanging separately if the Assembly doesn’t hang together. In time that will pass. Once electors and elected trust the system is fundamentally stable, we can more maturely explore differences.
Obviously, my hope is that somewhere in there a leftist faction can also emerge.
“they may well also have to stand together behind an agreed “programme for governmentâ€. Did someone mention Belgium?”
Zaphod Beeblebrox mentioned Belgium in the Hithchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where it was described as the worst swear word in the galaxy..
“Of which the “for all of us†UUP have how many members? At best a dozen or two?”
I’d doubt it had that many. When it had them, they were promoted feverishly in a way that would make Billy leonard look shy. Remember Patricia Campbell and her magazine for GB supporters crammed full of pictures of kittens and clouds?
Amazingly the DUP are probably better placed now to attract high-calibre RC members as it has hands on the levers of power, which always attracts people. I would never have thought of Seymour Sweeney as a natural DUP supporter for instance. Under next leader Robinson the business class will be wooed assiduously
“The UUP are still very fond of power. Only a minority of the party seem keen on pulling out of the executive and setting up a true opposition.â€
I think that from being very much a minority position the idea of opposition has gained considerable ground. A small number of representatives and advisers urged Empey to adopt this position from the start, but the actual practice of the executive has caused the idea to gain momentum.
“I do not think any of the current UUP politicians have the charm and charisma to carry it off.â€
Turgon, will Allister’s mob be likely to offer any more charm or charisma? I would argue that the conventional wisdom that the UUP lack quality representatives is much exaggerated and has been exacerbated by the perpetual sneering and sniggering up school blazer sleeves that passes for wit and charm in the DUP. The UUP have able representatives. What is required most urgently is agreement on strategy and coalescence around a common approach.
“The voters would also need to be convinced the UUP could do a better job. I remember a UUP supporter (I forget who) telling me McGimpsey would be a great success at health. I am not trying a personal attack on McGimpsey but he has been far from a great success.â€
Taking the health ministry and appointing McGimpsey was perhaps not the most sensible strategy Sir Reg has ever conceived I will grant you. My perception is however, that McGimpsey is far from the least popular minister and is not commonly viewed as the weakest link in the Executive. That honour is closely contested by Edwin Poots and Catriona Ruane with Ruane probably shading it by a short head. Although I agree generally with Willowfield’s rationale as regards the argument for opposition, I think it does no harm to capitalise on the sense that part of the reason we might leave the executive is that our ministers are being prevented from doing the job which they are capable of. It is also instructive that the most disastrous ministers are members of the DUP and SF respectively.
“Then there remains the issue that people will feel that the UUP simply wish to replace the DUP in the current dictatorship. Since the UUP has been there before and done no better a job I am doubtful the electorate will rush to give them that mandate.â€
But in establishing a tradition of opposition the character of the Executive as a dictatorship is undermined. No-one within the UUP is naïve enough to believe that they can leave the Executive, form an opposition and make a triumphant return as the majority unionist party at the next election. To start on the process whereby the party, hopefully in conjunction with the SDLP, are seen to be offering an alternative to the twin nationalisms DUP/SF carve-up and increasing the accountability of the devolved institutions, would be the most positive step by the party in some time and will provide a platform for recovery as well as benefiting democracy in Northern Ireland. Of course ultimately the UUP would seek to return to government.
“I still think, however, that the UUP are not really in a position to be a coherent opposition nor a viable alternative main unionist party.â€
With all due respect Turgon there is little evidence for that contention. I have never accepted the loose terms in which right and left are bandied about as regards unionism. To me, a more inclusive, less identity and community based form of unionism need not be in any way weaker on the Union. My contention is that as a party the UUP puts the Union in a more central position that the DUP. Even down to the negotiation of the GFA when the constitutional strands were prioritised perhaps to the exclusion of more symbolic and emotive issues. I guess I’m edging back to unionist / Ulster nationalist distinctions again.
darth rumsfeld @ 08:31 AM:
Culture shock warning; your reference to the one-time President of the Galaxy may significantly date you. It seems that the younger element are no longer capable of extensive quotation from the Masterworks.
Example; an A-level geography class. The teacher began by writing up “Slartibardfast”. Only two of the large group were able to recognise that what followed would be a disquisition on glaciated coast-lines. One of those enlightened two (who went on to study History at Uni) later defined Geography thus:
GCSE: colouring in. A-level: shading in. Degree: cross-hatching.
By the way, I finally cracked the problem of recruiting a Belgian cricket team by realising that all those Flemish painters were courtesy Belgians.
Back on topic: your last paragraph is, I believe, spot on.
I DEMAND to be told who these ‘able’ UUP MLAs are. Seriously: who?
“Culture shock warning; your reference to the one-time President of the Galaxy may significantly date you”
zarking fardwarks Malcolm
Ahem. I don’t think I wish to name able individuals because that might be taken as implying that others are not able. Suffice to say I think the talent within the membership is there and that an infusion of confidence is what is needed to tap it.
chekov,
A very well reasoned and argued set of points. If I believed that the UUP were capable of what you suggest I would be not only delighted but inspired. I personally would have a huge problem about the IRA being still extant but I would agree that you had a future.
As it is I am sorry but looking at your representatives I just cannot convince myself that you have the talent there. I try (and sometimes fail) to avoid personal attacks but really the personalities in leadership positions in your party do not seem up to it. You seem a much better analyst of the situation and indeed propose much more logical solutions than they ever seem to. Sorry,
Regards,