The UUP has repelled the very constituency it should be appealing to: a section of unionism whose memory is too long ever to vote DUP
WHEN SIR Reg Empey succeeded David Trimble as Ulster Unionist leader in June 2005, the party was an exhausted, demoralised mess, after years of internal bickering and constant harassment by anti-agreement unionists. Eighteen months earlier, high-profile members Jeffrey Donaldson and Arlene Foster had defected to the DUP, taking a sizeable chunk of the UUP’s future with them in the form of many of its up-and-coming “bright young things”.
A comprehensive trouncing by the DUP in the 2005 general election – leaving Sylvia Hermon as the sole UUP representative at Westminster – finally triggered Trimble’s resignation. It must have seemed at the time as though things couldn’t get much worse, but of course they did.
The following year, 2006, a newly strengthened and emboldened DUP signed up to the St Andrews Agreement, recasting itself as a pro-agreement party in the process. The Ulster Unionists suddenly found the centre ground within unionism seriously overcrowded. Soon thereafter, the DUP was happily ensconced in an executive alongside Sinn Féin, with the new first minister, Ian Paisley, reborn as a soft-spoken,
grandfatherly purveyor of moderation. Under cover of St Andrews, the DUP had performed a complete about-turn, and managed to remain intact. Crucially, it had not only brought its electorate with it, but had increased its support. Peter Robinson had read the mood of the unionist people perfectly: anger and frustration having largely been vented, they were ready to embrace an accommodation.
The Ulster Unionists, however, have never been adept at gauging the public mood (to put it mildly).
Faced with a DUP that was administering the Belfast Agreement with gusto and aplomb and pushing the political process ever forward, Sir Reg and his party were at a loss how to react. If some of those aforementioned “bright young things” had still been around, doubtless they would have pointed out to the UUP leadership that attacking the DUP for becoming what they had previously attacked them for not being would serve only to confuse the electorate.
But they weren’t around, and neither, it seems, was anyone else to offer sound advice – or at least no one who was being listened to. Acting purely on instinct, the UUP settled for spending its time being awkward and sniping at the DUP.
This not only came across as petty and spiteful, but pushed the party further to the right in the public mind. This was hardly the place to be, when the vast bulk of the unionist community had already settled on the middle ground, or was well on its way to that location.
All need not have been lost for the Ulster Unionists when the DUP repositioned itself in the centre ground. They could have taken a lead from the SDLP, who faced precisely the same problem when Sinn Féin moved to the centre, but survived well enough by holding to their position and refusing to play to the lowest common denominator. Indeed, Sir Reg and his coterie of advisers could have looked even closer to home for guidance, in the direction of North Down: to Lady Hermon and Alan McFarland to be precise.
The user-friendly, anti-sectarian, hard-working brand of unionism on offer in North Down, as exemplified by Hermon and McFarland, was supposed to be where the Ulster Unionist Party was headed anyway after the Belfast Agreement.
Instead, in its nervousness and whingeing resentment, the party began playing to all sorts of constituencies except the right ones. Progressively, North Down aside, the perception grew that the UUP had all but swapped places with the pre-St Andrews DUP – a perception no doubt reinforced by the party’s recent tantrum over the devolution of policing and justice. All of this was completely repellent to the very people for whom the UUP should be providing a natural political home: the substantial, and growing, left-leaning section of the unionist population (Protestant, Catholic and non-believer) whose memory is too long to ever vote for the DUP.
In the recent UK general election, Sir Reg banked on the support of moderate Alliance party voters in South Antrim to help him unseat the DUP incumbent. It was not forthcoming. Perhaps the UUP’s cosy relationship with Jim Allister and the TUV had something to do with that. Conversely, in Sir Reg’s old stomping ground of East Belfast, rather than support their own candidate (a moderate, as it happened), many Ulster Unionist voters switched their allegiance to the Alliance party and unseated Peter Robinson.
This may signal where the large unionist constituency mentioned above will eventually come to rest. In North Down, Lady Hermon, standing as an Independent after being sacrificed to make way for the party’s incomprehensibly daft link-up with the Tories, romped home with a substantially increased majority.
Now Sir Reg has signalled his intention to resign as leader in the autumn. No one could seriously argue that he has left the party in better shape than he found it. The signs are clear for whoever succeeds Sir Reg, but looking at those reputed to be lining up for the job, I very much doubt they will be heeded. The Ulster Unionist Party is probably finished.