Yesterday probably marked the lowest point for the Conservative / UUP pact since its inception 14 months ago but it could yet go lower to the point where the pact collapses.
The Flare-up began on Thursday evening when it was revealed on Hearts and Minds that during December at Schomburg House, there had been a “confidential” meeting between the DUP and the UUP to discuss unionist unity, organised by the Orange Order. The meeting was attended by Sir Reg Empey and David McNarry of the DUP and by Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds of the DUP.
In the course of the programme, it was revealed that the discussions included candidacy at the Westminster Elections and the likelihood that Sinn Fein would hold the office of First Minister after the next Assembly elections.
On Thursday night, Nigel Davenport continued to stir the pot on behalf of the BBC. After taking soundings from Conservatives on their reaction to the Broadcast, he used rugby union analogy to describe how they had been let down by the UUP
“More spooked I would say are the Conservatives who were blind sided by their partners the Ulster Unionists. Owen Paterson need not have gone to all that trouble booking Hatfield House if he had been aware that Bobby Saulters was already doing the job of bringing unionists together. The Conservative sources I spoke to tonight expressed some concern and dismay and said they would be looking for an explanation from Sir Reg Empey who attended the talks alongside Peter Robinson.”
By Friday morning, all eyes were on Owen Paterson. Writing for the BBC again, Michael Crick reported that Owen Paterson was seeking urgent clarification from Sir Reg Empey. He said
“The Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman Owen Paterson is seeking an urgent meeting with the Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey today over the future of the Conservatives’ pact with the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).”
Owen Paterson’s objective in having that meeting was clearly damage limitation. By 3.45 pm on Friday, Owen Paterson released the following statement:
“In his capacity as Ulster Unionist leader, Sir Reg Empey regularly meets all strands of opinion throughout Northern Ireland. He referred ‘in passing’ to a meeting, requested in October and held in December, but I was not aware of the content or the participants.
“As there was nothing of consequence arising from the meeting he did not mention it to me again. Sir Reg Empey has made clear to me that it has no bearing on our joint determination to stand together as ‘Conservatives and Unionists at the forthcoming Westminster elections to bring national, mainstream and non-sectarian politics to Northern Ireland.”
By 5.00 pm, Sir Reg issued his response to the crisis (source Conservative Home)
“The Ulster Unionist Party was invited in October 2009 by the Orange Order to a meeting with their Grand Master. On behalf of the UUP I accepted the invitation. Mr Saulters wanted a private and confidential meeting to discuss ‘ways and means of finding co-operation on the way forward.’ I have respected his request for confidentiality. Sadly this was not respected by others. Despite a conversation and discussion on the issues that Mr Saulters wished to raise, no agreements were reached.
”We are often asked to talk about Unionist cooperation where possible and about how best to provide stability for the future of Northern Ireland. However the UUP is very much aware, given past history, that cooperation is not always achievable. Indeed it makes it much more difficult when a significant aim of one of the organisations you are dealing with is to destroy you. The Ulster Unionist Party will continue to have discussions with organisations on issues that are of benefit to the Union, but we will not be used as an escape route for others who have significant political difficulties.
“Let me also reaffirm my commitment to developing our relationship with the Conservative Party. Along with our Conservative colleagues we will do all we can to promote, protect and preserve the Union and bring national politics unto the Northern Ireland agenda. The spectacle of recent days in our political journey at Hillsborough illustrates the need to get back as soon as possible to dealing with the issues that matter to people such as jobs, health and education.”
The question now is whether these press releases represent an an attempt to repair a hole in a sinking ship. Before Crick’s update was posted, Jeffrey Peel and most of the commenters who contributed to his blog yesterday were of the view that the pact could not survive. Meanwhile, on the Ulster Unionist side, Chekov published a scathing criticism of the conduct of the UUP leadership while Boballs insists that the UUP must clear up the mess. In his last post, he has expressed his belief the pact can not survive.
This morning, the Belfast Telegraph reports that Sir Reg Empey is blaming the DUP for trying to destroy his party. Is that news? After all, why else would the DUP have negotiated at St. Andrews for the largest party to hold the first minister’s position? Few are likely to be impressed with Sir Reg’s response to this crisis. It is unlikely to suppress rising anger within his party or more press speculation that the pact will unravel.
This morning, David Gordon began the tomato throwing on behalf of the Belfast Telegraph. Expect a pounding from other sections of the media over the next few days.
Filed under: Assembly, Conservative Party, David McNarry, DUP, General Election, Martin McGuiness, Nigel Dodds, Normal Politics, Northern Ireland politics, Owen Paterson, Peter Robinson, sectarianism, Sinn Fein, Sir Reg. Empey, St. Andrews agreement, Stormont, UK Parliament, ulster unionist party, Unionism, UUP, Westminster Tagged: | Assembly, Conservative Party, David Cameron, David McNarry, DUP, General Election, Martin McGuiness, Nigel Dodds, Normal Politics, Northern Ireland politics, Orance Order, Orange Order, Owen Paterson, Peter Robinson, Power Sharing, sectarianism, Sinn Fein, Sir Reg. Empey, St. Andrews agreement, Stormont, Tory-UUP linkup, UK Parliament, ulster unionist party, Unionism, UUP, Westminster
Seymour I think you are correct. The media is not letting go of this and the story has greater attraction because it has national resonance – given the decline in Conservative fortunes in the polls.
Sir Reg’s words sound like weasel ones given the fact that he’s allowing his Grand Wizard MLAs (McNarry, Kennedy et al) to spout Unionist Unity nonsense unchecked.
Tim Lewis has made clear that the Conservatives will not tolerate the UUP doing deals with the DUP. Sir Reg should threaten Kennedy and McNarry with removal of the whip at Stormont.
Moreover Alex Kane should explain why he has permitted Kennedy and others to spin the unity line. It’s clear there is an Orange/DUP cohort in the UUP. I suspect it is led by the UUP Chairman David Campbell.
Jeffrey,
It is at least a little bit comforting to hear of Tim Lewis’s words.
The UUP leadership has fallen into a neatly laid DUP trap. They should have seen it coming. That they did not demonstrates political naivety at its starkest. I have written more than one post warning that DUP invitations to do deals was a strategem to undermine the pact.
If the pact is to be saved, we need some very strong gestures from the UUP. I agree with what you say about Sir Reg’s statement. Sir Reg’s statement should have said unequivocally that there would be no deals with the DUP.
It may now necessary that he should make that clear following the latest gambit by the DUP (suspending selections for Westminster see Boballs latest post). They should puiblicly dump Hermon now and facilitate the selection of candidates as a matter of prior urgency. I also think that an effort should be made, strongly supported by the UUP, to persuade the three candidates that have resigned to reconsider their position.
With the pact teetering on the brink, the UUP is now in mortal danger. You would think that would concentrate minds
The biggest questions may be based on electoral mathematics which are explored here http://www.thedissenter.co.uk/2010/01/unionist-spring/ though most of these considerations should have been taken on board when the Conservatives/UUP were first talking.
Dissenter,
Thank you for drawing attention to your most interesting post. I agree with you that timing will be a factor in the outcome of political alignments over the next few months. I also agree with you that most of these considerations should have been thought through by the leadership of both the Conservatives and the UUP. Although I did not spefically predict the P & J crisis, personally, I was always concerned that the lack of any agreement with the UUP on Assembly elections was a source of instability and I implied as much in an earlier post.
One of the implications in your post is that Conservative ambitions seem to end with Parliamentary seats
“The only thing on the Conservative leadership’s mind at the moment is ‘seats’”.. Another factor which is not discussed in your post is the variations in ideology within Unionism. They are now such as to make Unonist unity is almost impossible. There are many in the UUP who are fighting hard to drive the UUP towards Conservativism with a view to an eventual merger with the Conservatives. If there was an attempt to merge the DUP with the UUP I think you would find many presently UUP supporters leaving in droves to join the Conservatives.
Many Unionist commentators are using the Conservatives electoral record in Northern Ireland thus far to dismiss them as a force likely to have any future electoral success in Northern Ireland. Until David Cameron became leader, that would have been fair comment because until then, Conservative central command was never prepared to put resources into building up the strength of the party.
It may take longer to generate electoral success without the UUP in Alliance but let me give you this fact. David Cameron and Owen Paterson have made it very clear that the Conservative project in Northern Ireland is a long term one. In the longer term, the Conservatives will achieve electoral success.
seymour conservatives are utterly sick and tired of people like Jeffery peel see peels latest comments.below
Yesterday I wrote to Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home and asked him to allow me write an article arguing why the so-called partnership between the Conservative Party and the UUP was now completely discredited. He declined my offer.
Tim was always very keen to offer me space when I was Vice Chair of the Conservatives here – prior to my expulsion as an officer of the Party. Moreover he is very happy to provide Owen Paterson virtually unlimited blog inches. Just yesterday he covered the unfolding events here…and featured statements from Sir Reg and Owen.
However, he refused me the opportunity to argue why the partnership is now throughly discredited – based on the disingenuous behaviour by the UUP leadership and the lack of discipline within the Party. This lack of discipline allows the incumbent MP to distance herself from her own leadership and for 2 MLAs (Danny Kennedy and David McNarry) to publically back a union with the DUP – without any attempt by the leadership to distance itself from them (largely because they are part of that leadership).
Tim’s decision to refuse me any opportunity to counteract the Paterson/Empey propaganda shows a clear lack of balance in Conservative Home editorial policy. Tim must know that this deal is full of holes. However his owner and paymaster, Lord Ashcroft, has been backing the UUP/Conservative deal with his personal wealth and bank-rolled Jim Nicholson’s election campaign. Therefore criticism of the “partnership” is a little bit too close to Conservativehome.
Come on Tim. You know you want to.
Torystoryni, do you snot know how and why Hatfield came about? It was initiated by Cameron, through Salisbury, and (here’s the crucial point) was originally to be a Tory-DUP bilateral. CCHQ was getting hung Parliament polls in early January, was irritated at Reg not getting the UUP nominees sorted out and turned to the DUP. Only later was the UUP invited and they repaid the favour by leaking the meeting afterwards. The talks centred on P&J but also included the elections. I don’t know what Salisbury and Paterson said about pacts but the former at least is savvy enough to know that the more unionists elected (though not Sylvia) the better for Cameron in a hung Parliament.
As I wrote the other day, you NI Tories are getting a crash course in realpolitik with a few car wrecks along the way (the resigned candidates). But you still are unable to see why principle and pragmatism need to be properly synthesised if you are to prosper in a very fluid situation, with the big DUP-SF Cuban Missile Crisis in the background.
It’s far easier for fundamentalists like Jeffrey Peel who takes an unambiguous rejectionist stance a la Jim Allister. (Bet he won’t appreciate the comparison.) Fair enough: Peel did get shafted by the party and he never wanted anything to do with the UUP anyway. But look at the DUP and Sinn Fein and see why they have got to the top of their pile. They not only work hard but they manoeuvre like mad, clawing away at every situation to advance themselves. Then look at your 3 resigned candidates who got spooked at backroom ducking and diving and walked away in pique. (For all their attributes, I can’t help thinking they were out of their depth.)
You say you want non-sectarian politics but there is a distaste for the actual wheeling and dealing side of politics even when you could benefit from it. You need UCUNF to work if you want any NI Tory elected in 2010. Otherwise it’s back to votes in 3 figures.
Finally you are forgetting that you are just a small part of a national party on the verge of power. I suspect that the UUP and the DUP will sort out South Belfast and Fermanagh South Tyrone between themselves (McCann having taken himself off the board), that this will be blessed by Cameron and Paterson and that you’ll be told to be good or Big Eric will come over and sit on you.
Oh and forget about Cameron and Paterson pledging their love to a long term Conservative project. You might want a monogamous marriage but (metaphorically) they willl be modern people ready to jump into bed with a tactically useful DUP. You wait and see.
“not” instead of “snot”, must have been subconsciously thinking of the comment threads on Slugger O’Toole.
The post looked only at the narrow issue of ‘unity’ in relation to the three parties around which most of the recent discussion takes place. Of course add the TUV into that consideration…
The term ‘nirvana’ is used in respect of ‘unity’. The post only goes to ‘unity’ in respect of short-term (months – not much more than a year) and only in respect of electoral considerations. That in reality only takes ‘unity’ in the consideration of a single narrow outcome and does not address the longer term issue of what is unionism, its role and its political purpose.
Conservative (Tory) and indeed Orange Order interests (read the excellent ‘Glory of being Britons’ by John Bew) were fundamentally opposed to liberal unionism as it emerged in the mid 1800s. Many of those lines continue.
thedissenter has been amused by some who have know idea the knowledge base, or the first-hand experience, that has informed the commentary. The post was only a means of drawing attention to the incomplete nature of the Conservative/UUP arrangements, the hubris surrounding its presentation, and the ‘unionist’ electoral issues that might drive short term electoral thinking.
thedissenter finds the structure and framework of the Con/UUP arrangements to be so loose and with such serious fracture points, that it lends strength to the view that this was a rushed deal for short-term electoral necessity. That wouldn’t preclude a longer-term wish to engage, but by rushing it may damage the project itself (if there is one).
At no point would thedissenter question Cameron’s or Patterson’s unionist instincts – the generation that they represent is a particular one that has a heightened awareness of ‘unionist’ factors at play in the body politic.
By the same token I would never then, and would not now, question Margaret Thatcher’s unionist instincts, but she still gave us the Anglo Irish Agreement.
In that 4th paragraph it should be ‘no idea’ and not ‘know idea’ – a blackberry moment.
The UUP’s reactive tribal unionism is shown in its “serious concerns about the timing of an announcement concerning Irish Language broadcasting in Northern Ireland”. There’s nothing wrong with arguing against Irish receiving public funding but the UUP do not argue against the measure on its merits, but rather because the Irish language causes “anxiety amongst many unionists”, [ie unionism is a tribe, not a political philosophy]
http://www.uup.org/news/general/general-news-archive/timing-of-irish-language-broadcast-announcement-seriously-suspect.php
The UUP have a habit of putting out silly conspiracy theories in this regard:
http://www.uup.org/news/general/general-news-archive/bbc-s-promotion-of-all-ireland-agenda.php
Shane,
Firstly, to be fair so some Ulster Unionists, not all of them are against the Irish Language just for the sake of opposing it.
The majority of Conservatives in Northern Ireland (but not quite all) are relaxed about the Irish language fully subscribe to the general policy of the Conservatives in Britain, which is to embrace the divergence of all the cultures within the UK nation.
One of the benefits of the Conservative / UUP pact is that (to borrow a phrase from David Cameron) we can move the UUP forward. I believe and am confident that one of the early influences of this relationship will be a removal (by persuasion) of most of the Irish Language phobia within the UUP membership.
Seymour, that is a fair point, though I’d question how many in the UUP share your vision (very few, I’d bet).
I’ve found it hard to reconcile Cameron’s purported motivations in Northern Ireland with his actions in Europe. There can be no pacts with other unionist parties in Northern Ireland. Why? Because they’re ‘sectarian’. But in Europe, the Conservatives have created a political group that encompasses far more unsavoury characters than anything you would find in the DUP. In Northern Ireland, Cameron wants to steer the Ulster Unionists away from constitutional politics – in the Brussels he does the precise opposite. He leaves a sensible, powerful, moderate, internationally respected political party – the EPP – and relegates himself to the sidelines with extremists, in a party dedicated purely to a platform of extreme anti-unionism. He cannot claim to want ‘normal politics’ in Belfast, replacing the constitutional wranglings, while the Conservatives become a Sinn Féin party in all but name in Brussels. He seems to have totally different principles with respect to the British Union and the European Union – this in my opinion leaves him morally impeded from criticising Ulster or Irish nationalists.
Basically what I mean is the Conservatives are unionists in Belfast and nationalists in Brussels.
Shane,
I like your analogy. To be more accurate, the Conservatives are analogous to the 19th Century Nationalists in Ireland whereas UKIP are Europe’s republicans.
I dont want to generate a discussion on Europe on this thread but having gone through earlier posts, I thought I had covered your points about the link with other parties in Europe. It seems I did not.
The Conservative view of Europe is that most of the States are federallist. They are driven towards federalism, emotionally, because of the scars of the second World War rather than on practical principles of what is best for Europe. For a long time, the Conservatives tried to influence Europe through the EPP group. This has not worked. The Conservatives took the view that a counterweight was needed. They decided to leave the EPP. The rules of the E Parliament are that You can not take part in committee work in Europe unless you are part of a grouping with a minimum number of MEPs from a certain number of states. The Conservatives decided to form a new group which would meet this criteria.
The Conservatives are well aware that some of the parties that have joined their group are rather unsavoury in their politics. It was a case of linking with these parties whilst “holding their noses”
You use the word “moral.” Be careful how you apply that to politics. In politics, core values and morals are a starting point. Politics always throws up conflicts, including the one that I have referred to above. In the end, a politician has to reach a policy based upon pragmatism. That is what has happened with the Conservative’s EU policy.
Seymour, I agree with you that many continental states are driven by federalist instincts. I’d contend that’s a perfectly salutary impetus- Europeans, more than most, have an appreciation of the gruesomeness of war, and understand the necessity of limiting the prospect of a reoccurence to the most minimal of circumstances. Europe has been plagued by fratricidal conflicts from time immemorial. The expressed ambitions of the saintly Robert Schuman, the father of the EU, were the eradication of ancient antagonisms, the advancement of living standards, and the securing of peaceful coexistence and cooperation between long-feuding nation states for the purpose of mutual benefit. In fidelity to those aims, the EU has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. We devalue those acheivements at our peril, for we can never take peace for granted.
For the sake of political expediency, the Conservatives are quite prepared to cooperate with fascists in Brussels. You explain that as a policy grounded in pragmatism. I can conceive of someone advancing the same rationale for electoral pacts with the DUP in SB/FST. The inconsistency between the two leads me to conclude that much more sinister motives are at work than those being openly professed.
Since the days of Elizabeth and Cecil, England has, often militarily, defined herself in contradistinction to Europe. I think a lot of the popular Euroscepticism so particularly prevelant in England is connected to the British state’s historic antipathy to Europe, and particularly France. [there are good articles on how this plays out in a modern context here: http://www.atholbooks.org/freemags/mags/IFA_1_1.pdf%5D Cameron, as a deeply convicted unionist, understands that any British withdrawal from the EU would result in alienating liberal or left-wing unionists in Scotland from the British union and make the Scottish electorate, by prospect of union with Europe, more malleable to seperation. Which is why I believe no Conservative government will ever offer a referendum on withdrawal from the EU. In Northern Ireland it’s well known that Protestants (perhaps the legacy of a colonial seige mentality) are in the main considerably more hostile to the EU than Catholics; so Cameron’s aggressive hostility for the EU could also alienate Catholic voters, who will be little attracted by talk of protecting British sovereignty from meddling foreigners.