UUP leader: Arlene Foster’s unionist pact view is ‘arrogant’

UUP leader Robin Swann has described remarks made by DUP leader Arlene Foster about possible unionist electoral pacts as "a bit arrogant".

In an opinion piece in the Belfast Telegraph on Monday, Ms Foster wrote that the DUP would not stand a candidate in Fermanagh and South Tyrone in the June 8th election, but wanted a clear run in Belfast South.

Mr Swann claimed outlining the DUP position in a newspaper made a unionist election pact meeting with the DUP "more difficult". He told BBC Radio Ulster: "If Arlene is already ruling out seats and putting up red lines it's going to make any conversation difficult.

“I haven’t had a chance to read it, [but] it strikes me as a bit arrogant as well . . . I had hoped to go into this as the leader of the UUP with some sort of hope for unionism – some sort of hope for coming to an agreement.

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“But, look, I’m still going to have the conversation, because unionism suffered at the March election. I was hoping there could have been a way forward, I still hope there is.”

He added that writing the article was “a strange way to start any conversation, by putting down a red line so firm and so adamant before we’ve even sat down to discuss whether we’re going to have a pact or not”.

‘Unilateral decision’

On Saturday after a UUP executive meeting in Belfast Mr Swann said there had been a “unilateral decision to withdraw from the constituencies of North Belfast, West Belfast and Foyle” for the upcoming election.

He also confirmed Tom Elliott as its Westminster candidate in Fermanagh and South Tyrone and Danny Kinahan in South Antrim. Mr Kinahan taking the seat from the DUP's Revd William McCrea was one of the big stories of the 2015 Westminster election and marked the party returning to the House of Commons for the first time in a decade.

The electoral pact in Fermanagh and South Tyrone saw the DUP and other unionists stand aside for Mr Elliott and he ended up winning over Sinn Féin's Michelle Gildernew by 530 votes.

In 2015, four constituencies – Belfast East, Belfast North, Fermanagh South Tyrone and Newry and Armagh – were covered by a unionist electoral pact which worked in all but the latter. At the time the then DUP leader Peter Robinson denied the pacts were sectarian and anti-democratic but rather designed to "maximise the unionist vote".

It is unclear if current talks between Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Green Party about a possible "anti-Brexit alliance" will amount to agreed candidates. So far Alliance Party leader Naomi Long MLA, who lost her Westminster seat in 2015 to the DUP in Belfast East where a pact was in place, has ruled out any form of electoral pact with any party. She says pacts are not co-operation but rather "a corruption of process and denial of democratic choice".