It looks as though we’re getting closer to the effective closure of the Conservative Party in Northern Ireland. Jonathan Caine and Owen Paterson are walking over the supine leadership of the Party locally to put in place backwoodsmen rather than Conservatives with individual minds and a vision for how real, tribal-free UK politics might change this place.
Today we heard that candidates of the ilk of Councillor Adrian Watson are being put forward to the joint committee as potential “Conservatives & Unionists”. Or Danny Kennedy MLA – who just a few weeks ago was arguing the merits of Unionist (read, Protestant) unity with the fundamentalist, flat-earth, creationist nut-job that is the Democratic Unionist Party.
This project, pact, arrangement is being carved-up by CCHQ apparatchiks that have no idea what it is to live in a society that is intellectually and politically impoverished by institutional sectarianism. Owen Paterson’s claims that he wanted to introduce a new brand into Northern Ireland politics ring very hollow when the electorate is being offered the same-old, same-old sash-wearing deadwood.
Ask yourselves, Owen and Jonathan, why it is that these nine announced candidates can’t bring themselves to join the Conservative Party. Ask yourselves why Mike Nesbitt – your star candidate – chose to hang onto your coat-tails but couldn’t bring himself to join your Party. Ask yourselves why it is that the leader of your new sister Party in Northern Ireland has yet to call himself a Conservative.
These people have no collective vision for Northern Ireland within this United Kingdom. These people define themselves on the basis of their parochial Ulster definitions of what it is to be a Unionist. This definition starts and stops here in ‘Protestant Ulster’.
UCUNF is a sorry disgrace.
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