I do wonder if at times Doug Beattie would rather deal with the Taliban than local politics, at least you know where you stand with the Taliban.
Despite being an ex-leader of the party and one of their big names, it seems his local constituency is not happy with his liberal stance and is planning to give him the heave-ho for next year’s assembly elections.
Where the situation gets weird is that, despite Doug having quite a high profile, he only scraped into the seat on the 7th count. Whoever they replace him with will likely have a much lower profile and the UUP will likely lose this seat. It’s a bit of a kick in the nuts if the party you have served for so long is basically telling you we’d rather have nobody than you.
I personally like Doug, he comes across as a likeable down to earth guy. but it seems for whatever reason the UUP does not seem to care much for embracing the middle ground anymore. It’s hard to see the sense of this strategy as the right wing in unionism is already covered by the TUV.
What’s the old saying? If you want loyalty, buy a dog.
Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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