Announcement

Followers of this blog will be aware that it had been mothballed it in June last year as I launched by new blog “Northern Ireland Centre Right.” The new blog was the focus of a campaign of persuasion, directed at the Conservative Party, that the Northern Ireland Regional Conservative Party should become an independent centre-right party which took no position on whether Northern Ireland should remain as part of the United Kingdom.

In the Autumn of this year, I became aware that the regional committee of the Northern Ireland Conservatives were campaigning hard with CCHQ for a new package which would enable them to field candidates at Assembly elections, including the election of 2011. I was persuaded that if they achieved their aim, I should suspend my Northern Ireland centre right campaign and campaign as a Conservative until after the Assembly elections. I made it clear, however, that the Conservatives had to be allowed to field candidates in the forthcoming 2011 election campaign. A promise to be allowed to field candidates in future elections was not acceptable, since it was clearly necessary, as a first step towards non-sectarian, non-communal politics, that the Conservative Party put some distance between itself and the UUP.

In November, it was looking very much as though the Committee would succeed in their aims. They had elicited favourable responses from very senior members of the party, including Owen Paterson. In preparation for that anticipated success, I decided to “dust down” the Tory Story NI blog. I still was not completely sure that they would succeed. Whilst the position was uncertain, I wrote posts simultaneously on Tory Story and NI Centre Right.

Two days ago, the Conservatives made their announcement that a new package had been agreed between the regional committee and CCHQ. The package included the right to campaign in Assembly Elections in the future but not the 2011 election. The Chairman indicated that it was operationally too late to field candidates in May. This looked to me like a “smoke screen” to conceal the fact that the committee had caved in to CCHQ pressure not to field candidates in the 2011 Assembly elections. In response to that, I asked one of the committee members to confirm or deny that the regional committee had made a commitment to CCHQ not to field Assembly candidates. The response I received was that they had not.

Since it appeared that it was now the regional committee that had made a decision not to field candidates, I held out a glimmer of hope that some local Associations could be persuaded by members to field their own candidates. I then learned that the Area committee had the power to block the fielding of candidates in its local area. As far as I was concerned, that marked the end of any hope that the Conservative Party would be fielding candidates in the 2011 Assembly elections.

Since there is no Assembly campaign to support, there is now no point in me continuing to write new posts on the Tory Story NI blog. As of today, I am announcing, once again, that there will be no further posts on that blog in the foreseeable future.

I will continue to write posts on Northern Ireland Centre Right until further notice. However, I will also be reflecting on what has happened and the political route most likely to be successful to achieve non-communal, normal left-right politics in Northern Ireland.  In particular, I will be considering, very carefully, whether there is any remote possibility that the critical mass of the Conservatives in Northern Ireland might come around to my way of thinking after 2015.

UUP accuses Conservatives about breaking promises

Not promises about not putting up Assembly candidates – yet.  However, for Conservative Yoopyphobes, there is a cheering headline to a report in the Belfast Telegraph today.

David McNarry has called for Owen Paterson’s head following his stated refusal to change the rule, enacted following the St. Andrews Agreement, that the First Minister will be the leader of the largest party – not the leader of the largest party within the largest designation. The rule has made it slightly more likely that Martin McGuinness will become First Minister, following the May Assembly elections.

Nobody here is surprised by what Owen Paterson has said. His position has been consistent for a long time. There will be no changing of any of the rules regulating Stormont without a consensus from both communities.

McNarry has also suggested that there is a difference of position between Owen Paterson and David Cameron. He is quite wrong. David Cameron has spoken out about his personal feelings when dealing with Martin McGuinness.  But he has also made clear the paramountcy of maintaining peace. He said:

”I do find it painful that I now sometimes sit around a table with Martin McGuinness and I think about what that man did.

”But everyone has to come to terms with that because that is the price we are paying for peace, and it is a price that is worth paying, because peace is so much better than the alternative.”

The idea that Conservatives would introduce a measure which would be likely to bring Stormont crashing down is ridiculous. It may be worth recalling the following words of the 2010 election manifesto, which the UUP once bought into

“In Northern Ireland, we strongly support the political institutions established over the past decade and we are committed to making devolution work.”

Conservatives prepare for UUP failure but they might still be hedging

At long last, agreement has finally been reached between the Northern Ireland Regional Conservatives and the Conservative leadership on a strategy for promoting Conservativism into the future.

The Party has issued the following announcement copied by email to the membership:

“The Conservative Party in Northern Ireland has committed itself to an ongoing programme of campaigning and development and will shortly move into a new campaign headquarters in Bangor, Co. Down. A full time member of staff will be based at the headquarters and one of the Party’s most senior campaign directors has been appointed to liaise with the Party in Northern Ireland.

The Party is committed to the development of progressive centre right politics which offer the electorate of Northern Ireland the opportunity to cast their votes for and participate directly with the national Government of the United Kingdom.  The Party will continue to review how Conservatives in Northern Ireland can play a full part in the Conservative Party as in every other part of the United Kingdom and senior Conservatives in Northern Ireland will work with the Board of the Party to develop that relationship.

Central to that development will be the Party’s desire to see Conservative Associations formed in every Northern Ireland constituency and an active programme of membership recruitment at a local level.

Conservative Party co-chairman Baroness Warsi said: “The Conservative Party in Northern Ireland has the unequivocal support of the Party nationally. Politics in Northern Ireland continues to evolve and we are determined to be at the heart of that evolution. Our approach will be one of active engagement – starting with the fielding of candidates in the Local Council elections in May.”

With that issue having been settled, the regional chairman of the Conservatives, Irwin Armstrong has now withdrawn his offer to resign. So is this the end of the uncertainty for Northern Ireland conservatives?

Jeffrey Peel’s headline suggests that the Conservative Party has “dumped” the UUP. In his statement on the question of fielding candidates at Assembly elections, Irwin Armstrong has said as follows:

“Members of our Executive have agreed that we would not now be able to properly contest the Assembly elections as we will not have the necessary infrastructure in place due to the events of recent months.”

The right to field Assembly (and presumably Parliamentary) candidates in the future is very important but there will be no further elections on the horizon (except the Euros) for four years.  Furthermore, you do not need an “infrastructure” to field a candidate. Ask an Independent. You just need to be able to register and pay the deposit.

There is a very strong case for the Conservatives putting up candidates, even in the limited time and space available. Nobody would suggest that a Conservative candidate would stand much chance of winning an Assembly seat but the act of fielding candidates would make the clearest possible statement to the electorate that the party no longer has any ties with the UUP.

Last November, Conservative leaders promised the UUP that they would not be fielding candidates.  The effect of this latest declaration is that the Conservatives will not be breaking that promise.  The UUP may now be in the equivalent of a bin liner but it could be taken out of it later.  It is much too early to say that it has been dumped.