UUP

Is Murdo Fraser right? No, but he’s got a point.

| Readers 45
Robert Price, Iain McGill, Mike Nesbitt, Bill Manwaring, Ian Parsley at Young Unionists debate asking Is Murdo Fraser Right?

“No, but he’s got a point” was probably the most succinct answer to the question “Is Murdo Fraser Right?” posed at last night’s Young Unionists’ event in QUB Students Union. With Mike Nesbitt in the chair, four centre-right panellists took ten minutes to outline their response to the question as well as the implications for unionism in Northern Ireland. There were 21 in the audience, nearly all young male students. Young Unionists: Is Murdo Fraser Right? (part 1) (mp3) Organiser …

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“the overall sense within the party remains one of drift and confusion”

| Readers 79
Lisburn South - UUP councillor Alan Carlisle defecting to join the DUP and pretending to sigin a blank membership form

Five months after the local government elections, and a few weeks before his party conference, a Lisburn councillor has today jumped from one shade of unionism to another. The leaving remarks by defecting councillors are often curious pieces of prose. There are some essential elements. Firstly, there’s a restatement of your sense of purpose to serve the people who elected you despite switching party colours – to help them understand why you didn’t simply resign and allow someone else from …

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Undue Influence is a corrupt practice

| Readers 46

The BBC have a brief report that the Electoral Office is investigating the claim: staff at Sam Gardiner’s office allegedly refused to assist constituents because they had not voted in the Assembly election This seems to relate to use of the Marked Register, a copy of the register from polling stations showing who was issued with a ballot paper, which was subject to an Electoral Office report in 2005. The Electoral Office report notes: We are instructed that political parties …

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Scrapping plan for on-street parking charges across NI leaves £8.8m hole

| Readers 10

As the BBC reports, Northern Ireland Regional Development Minister, the UUP’s Danny Kennedy, has shelved his predecessor, Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy’s, plans to extend on-street parking charges to 30 towns and cities across Northern Ireland.  Leaving a £8.8million hole in his budget.  From the BBC report The minister now has an £8.8m hole in his budget because of the projected revenue lost from on-street parking. He said this would have to be plugged by making cuts in other areas. “Given …

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The UUP Balance Sheet

| Readers 5

I’m grateful to Quincey for highlighting the publication of political parties 2010 accounts by the electoral commission. Here (a small PDF file) is the UUP statement: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/party-finance/database-of-registers/statements-of-accounts/soa/pdfs/soa_27-07-11_10-15-16.pdf That’s worth a browse. As always it’s the notes that are interesting. Notes 12, 13 and 14 show: 1) A bank overdraft of £33k 2) Longer term bank and other loans of £454k Note 17 shows  this debt fell by £60k over the year. Good going in a General Election year that….. These loans …

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Protestant Alienation 2011

| Readers 57

Almost 20 years ago now the academic community in Northern Ireland first began looking at the concept of Protestant Alienation. Amongst the factors they identified were the feeling that the Hume Adams talks were creating a blueprint for the defeat of unionism which the British government might acquiesce to. That feeling of alienation increased with events such as the IRA ceasefire. Looking back it is now easy to read the IRA ceasefire as a victory for unionism: the IRA had …

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The UUP’s election: the past is another country

| Readers 22

In the almost a month since the elections a number of attempts (Alex Kane’s is usually the best) have been made to analyse the UUP’s fortunes. The clear message from most (less so from Alex) has been that the UUP did badly and is in decline: quite possibly terminal decline. A number of reasons have been proffered for this state of affairs, most of them relating to the perceived rightward move of the UUP (again I point out that the …

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Alliance: successes and dangers

| Readers 28

The Alliance Party seem pretty pleased with their election. They received almost 51,000 votes, elected 8 MLAs and saw their share of the vote rise by 2.5% from 5.2 to 7.7%. (The council elections were broadly similar with them getting 7.4% and 44 councillors). They gained 1 MLA in East Belfast (from the PUP’s prodigal leader Dawn Purvis) which was the first time they have ever gained more than one seat in a single constituency in living memory. This success …

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“What I can’t do is give a cast-iron guarantee…”

| Readers 7

The new Northern Ireland Health Minister, the DUP’s Edwin Poots, has re-introduced doubt about the proposed radiotherapy unit at Altnagelvin when, during the election campaign, the NI First and deputy First Ministers’ had promised certainty. From the BBC report Mr Poots said he hoped to make a decision in the next few weeks. “It’s top of my in-tray. What I can’t do is give a cast-iron guarantee without having seen all the documentation and papers around this issue,” said Mr …

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McClarty to stay independent

| Readers 10

Former UUP MLA, David McClarty, now elected to the NI Assembly as an independent MLA, has just confirmed on UTV Live that he will not be joining the UUP Assembly group. That decision means the UUP will only get one ministerial position and the final, tenth, position on the NI Executive to be distributed under d’Hondt will go to the Alliance Party. Pete Baker

Candidate selection and the lingering death of the UUP in Belfast…

| Readers 50

I know, I know… We’ve probably done too much on the poor old UUP and not enough on other parties… But this particular train wreck is fascinating in the detail… For instance, I have just been listening to Martina Purdy on Talk Back, when she picked West Belfast as a place where the UUP could mount a comeback… You can see the reasoning. Bill Manwaring stood there for the second time in the last year and put nearly half as much …

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At least now, the UUP’s blinkers will probably come off

| Readers 102

The last time a major Unionist party was lead by anyone from west of Portadown it was Harry West in in 1970’s. That was not a happy period of the UUP’s history. The sense of ‘otherness’ that exists amongst border Unionists is well known, researched and documented. It is not a fictional notion dreamed up to further an argument, it is fair to say they are a different sort of Unionist. It is for that reason that the queston “does …

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David Ford on d’Hondt: “I don’t think it’s a particularly proportional system.”

| Readers 111

BBC NI political editor, Mark Devenport, calculates that the Alliance Party are in prime position to pick up the tenth, and final, ministerial position to be distributed under d’Hondt.  Now that “the government” have been re-elected… The NI Justice Ministry comes later – and may only be a temporary appointment.  From Mark Devenport Steven Agnew’s last gasp victory for the Greens leaves Alliance on 8 seats – exactly half the Ulster Unionist total of 16. Under the D’Hondt system the UUP gets …

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DUP dedicate victory to Kerr. Kerr brother rebukes UUP leader

| Readers 15

While DUP leader Peter Robinson has dedicated his party victory in the Assembly election to PSNI Constable Ronan Kerr. Constable Kerr’s brother Cathair has rounded on UUP leader Tom Elliott describing his comments on SF as prehistoric, prejudiced and questioning if voters would support them. @EamonnMallie prehistoric comments. Ppl need to move forward. Would his voters still vote for him nw? I would strongly doubt they all think that?? They are prejudiced comments at the end of the day. Blank

Tom Elliott can he lead?

| Readers 52

Tom Elliot became a surprising story of the election with his outburst in Omagh and he is destined to be at the centre of things throughout the coming days. With his party achieving 16 seats and Alliance 8 as things stand the UUP will lose a ministry. That is unless he can tempt party reject David McClarty back into the fold. Though as Mark Devenport notes the Alliance party could then try to cook up a counter deal with Steven …

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Pushing at boundaries

| Readers 16

Great to see some politicos working outside comfort zones in their chase for votes. In the last day we’ve had Niall Ó Donnghaile out in Castlereagh helping his SF colleagues hunt those final ticks, Conall and the SDLP trying their luck in Belvoir and Mark Finlay and the UUP giving the Markets and Lower Ormeau a punt. So who else has been working an area not know for easy votes? (I’m still waiting 4 years for the APNI to canvass …

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Bill Craig dies aged 86

| Readers 303

I’m not really the person to do justice to an In memoriam post for William Craig but as no one else has noted his death I’ll add this brief biography and thus create a thread for comment: Rt. Hon. William Craig, solicitor. Born in Cookstown, 2nd December 1924. Educated at Dungannon Royal School, Larne Grammar School, and Queen’s University, Belfast. Served in the Royal Air Force from 1943 to 1946. Founder of Queen’s University Unionist Association in 1950. Admitted as …

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Everyone loves a mandate…maybe even a couple?

| Readers 12

In response to Mark McGregors [limited] piece about double jobbing/dual mandates I thought I’d expand it a little and look at a comparative piece on the Alliance Party – candidates who are running for both Local Council and NI Assembly. At the end of this post there are also some percentage figures on MPs who are also running for the Assembly by Party. Choice of party for the first study was simply down to time limitations – I would love …

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Dump d’Hondt: The UUP’s suggestion for improved Executive

| Readers 53

There are still some folk in the SDLP who see their role (as Mark Durkan undoubtedly did) as the guardians of the institutions set up by the Belfast Agreement. But as we’ve seen with the shift in the rules for the election of First and deputy First Minister’s roles, that’s not a position held anywhere else. The UUP’s Mark Neale looks at the impasse over education and reprises Tom Eliott’s idea that the winning parties ought to be forced to …

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