And by ‘here we go’, I mean the devastating rift that hit the party like a political tsunami over the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 when the UUP was virtually evenly split between the Yes and No camps.
The rival lobbies formed themselves into pressure groups. The No camp had Union First while the Yes camp opted for Re:Union. The end result was that the UUP lost its position as the leading party in Unionism to the DUP in the Assembly in 2003, followed by Westminster in 2005.
In the Assembly, the UUP is now at its lowest ebb in terms of numbers. With Doug Beattie resigning, the Stormont MLA group is now eight compared to the 1998 elections when it had 25 plus Assembly members. At Westminster, where once the party was in double digits in terms of MPs, it now has one - Robin Swann in South Antrim.
There has been much speculation that under current leader and North Antrim MLA Jon Burrows, the UUP is being nudged ideologically to the Right on the political spectrum to form an unofficial coalition of the Right with the DUP and TUV so that pro-Union parties get the message to transfer votes to each other in next May’s crucial Stormont and local government elections.
But Unionism’s real challenge is to persuade the tens of thousands of pro-Union supporters to actually come out and vote on polling day. Instead of chasing this mythical centre ground, Unionism should be concentrating on building its credibility amongst the so-called ‘stay at home’ electorate, especially in loyalist working class localities.
For several years, the UUP has been living in an ideological cloud cuckoo land that it has to win votes back from the supposedly middle of the road Alliance Party.
Whilst many Unionists may have voted for Alliance as a protest against the disunity in Unionism, the political mask has slipped in Alliance and the party is now firmly a part of the Pan Nationalist Front with the SDLP and Sinn Fein. This is the real message which the UUP has got to get across - that Alliance is now an Irish unity republican party.
There has also been much talk about a so-called realignment within Unionism, with the liberal wing of the UUP and the pro-Union faction within Alliance forming a new-look Liberal Unionist Party, whilst the Right-wing of the UUP joins up with the DUP and TUV to form some new kind of Loyalist and Unionist Party.
But one fact is certain, setting aside the debate on ideological realignment, the current Beattie/Burrows unofficial civil war has the potential to do untold damage to the UUP come May 2027. The battle lines are strangely similar to 1998.
The Yes camp wanted the Good Friday Agreement to work and were seen as the new liberals in the party under the late Lord David Trimble; those who were sceptical as to whether the Good Friday Agreement could succeed wanted to rekindle the opposition which had brought down the Sunningdale power-sharing Executive in 1974.
Under Burrows, the opinion polls have steadily become more favourable for the UUP. Burrows brought a media dynamic to the party. His positive media profile and use of social media gave the firm impression of a party which knew where its ideological direction was going.
This would be no repeat of that explosive post Brexit European election when the UUP lost its MEP seat to Alliance, a European seat the UUP had held since 1979. But the UUP was a divided party over Brexit, sending out mixed messages - is it a Leave party or a Remain party?
The Alliance bounce was clear because Alliance was categorically in the Remain camp, while the DUP and TUV were equally firmly in the Leave camp. Voters were totally confused on what the UUP stood for.
Unionism has to educate its power base that Alliance is no longer the ‘soft U’ Unionist party that it was under Lord John Alderdice; Alliance has become Sinn Fein ‘lite’. That’s the key message the UUP has got to repeatedly hammer home to pro-Union voters.
And there must be a clear statement that the lunatic fringe strategy of ‘Vote Mike, Get Colum’ is firmly dumped in the dustbin of history.
If there’s going to be a purge in the UUP as a result of the Beattie/Burrow ‘political handbags at dawn’ spat, then it must be of those policies which want the UUP to resemble the now defunct liberal unionist movements of the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (UPNI), once fronted by former Northern Ireland Prime Minister Brian Faulkner, or the NI21 party once fronted by former UUP MLAs John McCallister and Basil McCrea.
The propaganda war must be stepped up. Alliance must be seen, not as a traditional middle of the road, progressive and pluralist party of the moderate centre, but as a clear nationalist party which has adopted the political ground once held by the defunct Irish Independence Party fronted by former British Army officer and Protestant John Turnley
The UUP has got to put out the message - the so-called liberal unionist experience to copy the Alliance party has floundered and the UUP needs to return to its natural and traditional Right-wing position on the political spectrum.
Conventionally pro-Union voters in Alliance will see how the party is drifting steadily towards republicanism, and the currently under-fire leadership of the UUP must work to purge the party of this daft centre ground nonsense.
This unofficial UUP was working if the opinion polls are taken into consideration. But if the Beattie/Burrows bust-up continues to fester, the party should remember the old maxim - no one votes for a divided party.
 |
| Follow Dr John Coulter on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter John is a Director for Belfast’s Christian radio station, Sunshine 1049 FM. |
No comments