Too green a tree for the UUP?
As I’ve mentioned before on this site one of the odd things about the Jim Nicholson Euro Campaign election materials is the lack of a logo. Plus the “Conservatives and Unionists” at the bottom of the posters is so tiny as to be almost unreadable.
Interestingly, my mother was, yesterday, canvassed in Lisburn by a ”little man” who thrust a leaflet under her nose as she was mid conversation, with a friend, in town. She felt the canvasser was a tad rude. So she made clear to him that if he was canvassing for the DUP he had no hope of getting her vote. “No,” he said, “Jim Nicholson.” The canvasser made no attempt to explain Jim’s Party affiliation.
Now, my Mum, in common with most other local citizens, has no idea who Jim Nicholson is or what Party he’s from. So, on closer inspection of the election leaflet, she was somewhat surprised that he was the Conservatives and Unionists candidate. And then it came back to her. He’s the guy from the UUP. The Conservative thing threw her.
So she called me. And this was her question: “Is he a member of the Conservative Party?”
“No,” I said. “Strange as it may seem, no he’s not.”
“But,” she said, “it says here he’ll be with the Conservatives in Europe.” Hmm…
And there’s the rub. Here we have a candidate, standing as the Conservatives and Unionists (sans logo), who isn’t actually a member, as far as I can gather, of the Conservative Party – the Party he’ll be sitting with in Strasbourg. Ironically, I am a member of the Conservative Party but I am not permitted to hold office in the Conservative Party, because I was critical of another political Party – the UUP. Indeed, I expect I would be unable to stand as a Conservative candidate, despite being a fully paid up member of the Conservative Party.
And now back to the tree. I can today reveal the key reason why the UUP couldn’t countenance using the Conservative logo on its elections materials. The Conservative tree logo is green. Yes, green trees and the UUP just don’t get on. They could live with a blue tree, or even a union jack tree, but a green tree? No, that wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all.
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