Joint candidates plan seeks UUP executive nod of approval

To follow up on Frank Millar’s Irish Times’ article, a reputable source has confirmed to me that his understanding is, Millar is correct. A UUP executive meeting this week will consider proposals to select joint candidates and fight joint campaigns in forthcoming European and Westminster elections with the Conservative and Unionist Party. Should a 65% majority assent, the proposals will be accepted, otherwise the matter will come before an extraordinary general meeting.

If this information is correct, it represents precisely the type of progress this blog has been calling for. It would also, presumably, be enough to justify David Cameron addressing the Ulster Unionist party conference at the start of December.

Without a formulated deal, the DUP has tried to undermine efforts and drag the UUP back into the morass of sectarian politics. No doubt an announcement will see an intensification of the Democratic Unionist campaign. The UUP must work hard to get behind its vision and explain it to the electorate, when, if, progress is made.

Update: I am informed that due to the sad death of Sir Jack Hermon there will be a short delay in detail coming before the executive meeting. The new meeting has been convened for 20 November.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

Image
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retained a substantial haul of arms.
Read more

Walker loada rubbish

Former BBC employee Brian Walker has overrun Slugger O’Toole lately with countless poorly structured, poorly written posts. It is possible quickly to recognize and avoid these by subjecting each Slugger piece to a cursory inspection and identifying those which feature characteristic lack of paragraphing and a tenuous grasp on the technicalities of linking source articles. Although I generally evade Walker’s posts by this method, occasionally (and unfortunately) I have persevered and found that their content is as unrewarding as the style in which they are written. Today, for instance, I inflicted upon myself Brian’s thoughts on a mooted Fianna Fail / SDLP merger . In actual fact, he is right to welcome news that the Southern Irish party has dropped this proposal from its agenda; however, the logic by which he arrives at this conclusion is parochial nonsense. To summarise, Walker believes that pursuing realignment with larger parties, whether they are from the rest of the UK or fro
Read more