The Ulster Unionist Party has been here before – many times. Half of its senior politicians are former party leaders: Tom Elliott, Mike Nesbitt, Robin Swann, Steve Aiken and now Doug Beattie.
No surprise then, that Beattie’s shock resignation on Monday led to discussion not on who might want to be the UUP’s next leader, but on who the party had left to lead it.
For all its carousel of leaders, there has not been a leadership contest in the UUP since 2012; this time, the most likely candidate is the current deputy leader, Lagan Valley MLA Robbie Butler, though there is a question mark about his enthusiasm for the role.
Nevertheless, he may yet find himself party leader, the latest in a long line of UUP MLAs who have agreed to give it a go. If he does so, he will be well aware that he will inherit the same problems that have been passed, baton-like, from one leader to another, and which have led this latest leader to throw in the towel.
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Once, the Ulster Unionist Party was lord of all it surveyed. It governed Northern Ireland from partition until the collapse of the Stormont parliament in 1972 and was the largest unionist party at the time of the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
The DUP overtook it in the Assembly elections of 2003 and since then, the UUP has been in decline. In the most recent Assembly vote, in 2022, it took 11.2 per cent of the vote and returned nine MLAs, compared to the DUP’s 21.3 per cent vote share and 25 MLAs.
This is a party which, more than 20 years after it lost its position at the head of unionism, is still trying to figure out what it is, what it stands for and why people should vote for it.
In an interview with this newspaper after he became leader in 2021, Beattie described the party as a “supertanker” with a “big turning circle”.
“We have been reaching out for a long time and have been changing for a long time, and we’re maybe picking up a degree of speed now,” he said.
He staked his pitch on the middle ground; on a moderate, liberal, inclusive unionism which he hoped would both distinguish it from the DUP and win back former unionist voters who had switched to Alliance.
The future, he said in that interview, would be down to “that demographic coming up the middle who identify as Northern Irish”.
“That’s where we need to go. I think that’s where we’re going, and that’s what I’m playing my hand on.”
Beattie understood he had to make the UUP distinct from the DUP, that it could not be DUP-lite but an alternative vision of unionism.
The problem was that same tug of war that was being played out between the parties – a conservative unionism versus a more moderate form of unionism – was also being played out within the UUP.
Beattie played his hand, and lost, though it is worth stressing that under his watch the UUP had its most successful recent election, re-electing its first MP to Westminster since 2017.
His resignation statement spoke of the “toll both physically and mentally” of leadership, how it had at times been “lonely and isolating . . . it strains friendships and political relationships”.
He also spoke of frustration.
“Irreconcilable differences between myself and party officers combined with the inability to shape the party going forward means I can no longer remain the party leader.” Some “did not agree with the direction and path I set for the party and the vision I promoted”, he said.
“I hope the new leader is given the freedom to act.”
The UUP’s constituency associations have traditionally been fiercely independent – “like herding cats”, says Alex Kane, former UUP director of communications.
“It goes back to a lot of tension with the party officers.”
Though the final straw seems to have been a selection dispute in North Antrim, there have been other differences of opinion within the party, including over the choice of Colonel Tim Collins as a UUP candidate in North Down, and over whether the party should go into Opposition at Stormont.
For Kane, Beattie is like the leaders before him.
“Every party leader who’s gone since Terence O’Neill almost has said basically the same thing: we need to work out what we stand for, who we stand for, where we stand, how we get votes, what our role is,” said Kane.
“What’s Robbie [Butler] going to do? The same people that disliked Doug [Beattie] are probably going to dislike Robbie even more.
“I don’t know where the party goes, it has tried everything, every form of reinvention . . . there’s just this sense of the party continuing to drift, because it still doesn’t know what it wants to be.”
Beattie’s vision, articulated again in that resignation statement, was of an “inclusive Ulster Unionist Party, promoting a positive message”.
For the UUP’s next leader, the challenge remains: figure out what this means and how to persuade people to vote for it.
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