Doug Beattie has called for the creation of a “power-sharing opposition” at Stormont in his speech to the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) conference in Belfast on Saturday.
The UUP leader said Northern Ireland’s mandatory five-party coalition “no longer delivers good government” and instead there needed to be “a working power-sharing government with a working power-sharing opposition to hold them to account”.
Stormont, he said, had become “dysfunctional”, with measures that were supposed to protect the minority instead “used and abused” for the purpose of frustrating the Executive and the Assembly.
A return to the “factory settings” of the 1998 Belfast Agreement and the creation of a power-sharing opposition, he said, would “put the electorate in the driving seat and allow them to vote out those not up to the role and vote in those with a better vision for the future”.
In his first speech to the conference as party leader, Mr Beattie - who espouses a more liberal brand of unionism - was confident about the UUP’s prospects in the next Assembly election, saying that the party was “back” and could take the position of First Minister.
“Imagine what we could do as First Minister,” Mr Beattie said. “That’s what we are aiming for, conference. Because we can do it.”
In his speech, Mr Beattie said his pro-Union vision was of people in Northern Ireland working together “regardless of their religion, gender, colour, sexual orientation, background or culture”.
He spoke of a “confident” unionism, saying the “tide was turning” and the party had “self-belief, and that self-belief is contagious. The people are picking up on it and turning back to the Ulster Unionist Party,” he said.
Fair aspiration
To those who “are peacefully campaigning for a united Ireland,” he said, “this is a fair aspiration and we should not fear those with different political aspirations to us”.
Mr Beattie also referenced Northern Ireland’s centenary and said there was “much debate about whether we should celebrate, commemorate or mark the event”.
“Others can have that conversation, and I say this: Northern Ireland deserves to exist, we do exist, and we are 100 years old and we are going to be 200 years old at some stage so we must look to the future.”
The UUP leader again ruled out the prospect of any electoral alliances - such as the one suggested recently by the DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson - and said UUP candidates would stand in each constituency.
“There will be no pacts, there will be no standing aside. We will stand on our own two feet.”
In regard to the Northern Ireland protocol, he said it must be “replaced with a treaty that works for all of the people on this island”.
He was critical of the DUP’s failure to use its influence at Westminster to prevent the creation of the Irish sea border, describing the party as “naive and shortsighted” and pointing out that the UUP could not be held to account “for the champagne receptions and the backroom deals done by others who had influence at the time of the negotiations”.
Earlier, the Minister for Health, Robin Swann, raised concerns over the potential impact of the Northern Ireland protocol on the supply of medicines.
“My officials are working around the clock to find practical solutions so that patients are not affected,” he said.
“But let me be clear, no matter what the European Commission may think is acceptable or a pain worth inflicting, as minister I’ll not countenance for a single second patients in Northern Ireland going without the medication they need. It’s just not going to happen.”
