John Strafford
John Strafford, a long-time friend of the Conservatives in Northern Ireland, has called for an end to the electoral pact between the Conservatives and UUP following the now-infamous talks at Hatfield House just over a week ago.
Nick Robinson is also now running with the Hatfield story.
I’ve just talked with John on the phone. He is still very annoyed at how this debacle has unfolded and is perplexed by Owen Paterson’s decision to hold the talks in the first place. Like me, he thinks this entire sorry episode reeks – and has set us back 20 years in terms of Party organisation here.
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Beware of what Nick Robinson is saying. He is simply relaying the Downing Street spin that the Tories are evil for being a player in Northern Irelnd rather than a referee where the union is concerned.
Alasdair McDonnell believes Dublin (and Hillary) should be players and like all nationalists gets extremely enraged if Conservatives behave like the unionists they are.
Of course the Tories once in government are more than unionists (since 1918 anyway).
The NI Conservatives are now trapped in UCUNF which is a hybrid but better that it is allowed to develop organically than pulled asunder in full view of the world.
I tend to agree that Nick Robinson is making mischief. I agree with Alasdair McDonnell’s point but not his motivation. But the Hatfield talks were ill-conceived. And if UCUNF is to survive it needs to show resolve. Candidate announcements need to move on without Sylvia and Reg needs to show real leadership instead of constantly trying to achieve consensus. Sylvia must be seen to be toast unless she can sign-up the pact. I suspect that Reg does not have the guts. And that might spell the end of the thing.
I gather that Sheila Davidson is on Today’s World at One on Radio 4. Will be interesting to hear her perspective.
Sheila and Peter McCann were both on Talkback earlier today too.
Hmm the plot thickens. It would appear that Sheila Davidson did not ‘do’ World at One after all. Tim Lewis (Area Chairman, Conservatives) stepped into the breach.
I was initially approached to take part in the programme – then was told by Radio 4 that Sheila would do it, then Tim ends-up doing it. Bizarre.
Will be interesting to see how things pan out over the next few days.
My own favourite highlight was John Strafford describing the current situation as “an Irish stew”. Keep it up John, comments like that are really going to endear NI people to the Conservatives!!!
Do we not eat Irish stew here? Must say, I’m with John. It is a right Irish stew.
The public domain now know from ‘Hearts & Minds’ BBC last night that the secret meeting at Hatfield House was not the first between the UUP and the DUP over the issue of forming a pact against SF & SDLP at Stormont and in all 18 seats at the May 2010 Westminster election. Only this time the Conservatives were kept in the dark. The TUV met with leaders of both the UUP and DUP at OO headquarters back in early December 2009. Drew Nelson’ the Orange Order Grand Secretary, one of the Chairmen of the meeting is one of Jim Allister’s right hand men in the TUV. Wonder what Owen Patterson, David Cameron and NI Conservatives make of their UCUNF partners meeting with the DUP & TUV and keeping it a secret from them?
Orange Order convened ‘unionist unity’ talks
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/8486354.stm
I’ll be writing about this later today.