Conservatives: Hatfield was about promoting political stability…
Being in the States for the last few days, I’ve been a little behind the times. My apologies to the Conservative party for the tardiness in getting this statement to press, which comes in response to Eamonn’s story yesterday. A party spokesman writes:
“As somebody who was actually at Hatfield throughout, I can say that while one of the parties might have arrived with that agenda it was most definitely not the basis on which the Conservative Party brought the participants together.“As we made clear at the time, the purpose was to help promote political stability and in particular explore means of overcoming the impasse on policing and justice and avoiding a collapse.
“There is only one electoral pact – between the Conservative Party and the Ulster Unionist Party. That is what both parties are committed to making work.”
Comrade Stalin
“You guys reel off this line like clockwork any time someone offers a criticism of the UCUNF project. Can’t you come up with something more original ?”
Who are “you guys”? I’m simply an ordinary voter. I don’t even have a single member of the UUP or the NI Conservatives as a personal acquiantance, never mind belonging to either party, if some sort of party involvement is what you’re getting at.
The silly little gambit by the deliberately misnamed “Moderate Unionist” does suggest he’s rattled by the project in question.
As for your own shrill attacks – to the uninvolved observer (i.e. me, for one) it does seem that you as an Alliance member feel threatened by the Conservative-UUP tie-up.
So Mr Stalin, can you list the Alliance partys 18 candidates with “ultra backbone” ? I persume they are standing in this election?
Being “threatened by the Conservative – UUP tie up”
For all the banana skins that have got in the way of the UCUNF march, those who would like things here to carry on as they are know very well that there is unquestionably a very large proportion of the Northern Irish population who would like to see this region move on from where we are now.
The UCUNF project may not be the path that most of these people would chose. What is is important (and this could yet still become a potent message) is that UCUNF do offer something new – a chance for Northern Ireland voters to vote for one of the parties that oould form the Government of their nation and the chance to vote for a party on the basis of shared values, as opposed to tribal politics.
If that message, which is actually very short and very simple, gets through to the average voter in a slick campaign which concentrates on getting it acrss, there is still an outside chance of a game-changing result.
I suggest this is probably the real reason why opponents of the UCUNF project are still feeling threatened by its existance.