Lazy, appalling, pointless dross attacking Tory /UUP deal

Roy Garland has a characteristically confused, rambling and contradictory piece in the Irish News, attacking the UUP / Tory deal. I studiously avoid the term ‘fisking’ (it’s too easily mispronounced), but let’s have a detailed look at Garland’s non-argument. Unfortunately he hits his stride early, and I’m compelled to begin with the very first sentence.

“Ulster Unionists have entered a formal electoral pact with the Tories on the heels of an informal pact with Jim Allister’s TUV.”

Ulster Unionists do not have a pact, informal or otherwise, with the TUV. Both parties are very clear on this point. The two groups had a discussion, which is a normal and usual thing to do in politics. Garland’s nationalist colleague Tom Kelly actually congratulates the UUP for shunning the TUV in favour of the Tories in his Irish News column. Garland continues,

“A few months ago I gave a guarded welcome to a vague UUP/Tory link-up but the TUV pact conflicts with the pluralist motives supposedly underlying the Tory link-up.”

A TUV pact WOULD conflict with ‘pluralist motives’ behind the Tory link-up. There was no TUV pact. It is worth noting though, that in this sentence Garland supposes pluralist motives behind alignment between Ulster Unionists and Conservatives. Initially he welcomed these developments. Bear this in mind as he starts making unsubstantiated statements a little later.

“Now I wonder if continuing the descent into oblivion might have been a better option than being in a Tory poker game.”

Garland is for ‘vague’ link-ups, but a concrete link-up makes the UUP part of a ‘Tory poker game’.

“Ulster Unionists had an opportunity to take the lead in Northern Ireland politics but they flunked it.”

An interesting statement, if it were moored to any manner of context whatsoever. Is he talking about pre-1997 Ulster Unionists? Further back? What has it got to do with the present UUP’s travails? Presumably this opportunity was not presented to the party within the time frame of its latest talks with Tories.

Garland then indulges in a short digression on the subject of unionist unity, which he rationalises, but does not commit to, other than indicting the UUP for opposing the DUP’s leadership. Pluralism, sharing and other such concepts are not at this juncture mentioned. It is however implied that the UUP’s Tory link-up is aimed at putting the DUP on the back foot. Now, if Garland is suggesting that Ulster Unionists would like to encourage unionists to vote for them, and not for the DUP, then he might have a point. If he is suggesting that the UUP is trying to outflank the DUP on its own ground, then his argument really does not bear any scrutiny.

“There is deep-seated reticence regarding a UUP/DUP merger even without Ian senior in charge. Elements of the old guard – Iris, Willie, Sammy, wee Ian etc – are seriously inhibiting factors.”

Ok. So we’re back in the realm of reality again. There are profound differences in content and tone between the UUP and DUP which continue to preclude any possibility of merger.

“A Tory link-up may seem a clever alternative strategy but I suspect it to be too clever by half because it has left the Tories playing Orange cards with UUP novices.”

We could hold a competition to establish what this sentence means. Any ideas? Just for fun and no prizes.

“David Cameron’s declining lead over Gordon Brown together with the Conservative retreat to parts of England means the Tories desperately need to pull something out of the hat.”

Ok. That is an analysis (and a contentious one) of the current national political situation. Why does it render the UUP’s vision of offering voters meaningful participation in Westminster politics a bad idea? The Conservatives will not always form the UK’s government. Sometimes the party will be strong and others it will be less so. It still plays a leading role in the politics of the country, whether from opposition or government. In any case, the Tories are holding up well in the polls, they’re still ahead and the party retain Westminster representatives in every part of the UK (other currently, than Northern Ireland). That has not changed since Roy commended the idea of ‘vague’ link-up!

“The dubious claim that they are the party of the union is unconvincing and many unionists still blame them for suspending the old Stormont and supporting the Anglo-Irish Agreement under Thatcher.”

It is the only party to organise in all four corners of the UK. It is the only major national party which explicitly calls itself ‘Unionst’. It is the only national party offering to become involved as an unambiguously unionist force in Northern Ireland. The political situation is incomparable to 1973 or 1985. Ulster Unionists are aligning with a contemporary party, not offering an endorsement of every previous Tory policy in Northern Ireland.

“The new link-up is also supposed to reflect a new dynamic, pluralist ethos but it is more of an Orange card to steal a march on the DUP and of course Irish nationalists.”

Why is it an ‘Orange card’? Is there a shred of evidence to sustain this contention? His previous sentence witnessed Roy opining that the Tories were not the true party of Union, now he lambastes the UUP for playing an ‘Orange card’ by linking up with Conservatives. If ‘stealing a march’ on Irish nationalists, or the DUP, involves strengthening the Union, then the UUP is entirely justified in seeking to do just that. If Garland believes the Union is in any respect intrinsically linked to the Orange Order or Orangeism, he has a very narrow understanding of what it represents.

There follows this paragraph, which frankly does not deserve comment. It stands on its own as a piece of insightless ramble.

“Some think the Trimble duo – David and Daphne – are central to all of this but UUP representatives deny it. The former UUP leader is now a Tory peer while Daphne remains in the UUP but apparently working for her Tory husband and another Tory peer as parliamentary researcher. Others think that for some reason the great and good of the UUP are keen to welcome local Tory “professionals” into their party.”

Then we have,

“The real motivation seems to be to upstage the DUP, consign it to the history books and find a plausible rationale for their own existence. This is considered legitimate politics and in any case the UUP’s support for the Good Friday Agreement was always less than whole-hearted.”

So the UUP wish to offer a better alternative than exists currently in Northern Ireland, win votes and present a coherent set of policies. How cynical and unacceptable! I’d suggest it is not only ‘considered’ legitimate politics, it is actually made from the materials which legitimate politics consists in. And what is the final sentence supposed to imply? How does it fit into Garland’s ‘argument’? Does he have an argument? Are the UUP jettisoning the Belfast Agreement as part of the Tory deal? I missed that document!

“Having led the way to powersharing the UUP cannot now successfully undermine the DUP from the right. If it did they might bring the whole edifice down.”

Leaving aside the assertion that the UUP are moving to the right of the DUP, for which there is precisely no evidence (and Roy does not think of offering any), what does the rest of this nonsense mean? Have either the UUP or the Tories (whose deal encompasses Europe and Westminster for the time being) intimated that they wish to collapse power-sharing? If not, is any unionist dissent from the DUP’s line illegitimate because it might undermine that party and bring down power-sharing? Are we to be deprived, not only of national politics in Northern Ireland, but of any politics at all?

“They want to shed the English Tory image but they look more like lame ducks snapping at Gordon Brown’s widely applauded efforts to steer the economy through recession.”

Bearing in mind that this follows on from the point above, indeed it is housed within the same paragraph, you might wonder how it relates in any way to Garland’s previous sortie. I would suggest that it does not. I would suggest that the entire article is comprised of unsubstantiated contentions, largely untethered to a central thesis, bound only by prevailing negativity toward the UUP and Tories. Garland gets paid for this!

“The UUP will refuse to revert to subservience to English Toryism and the Tories cannot afford to be closely associated with myopic unionism. While claiming to remain on the right on the constitution the DUP might revert to its original aim of being on the left on social issues. But neither party is serious about tackling the sectarian elephant in the room. As for a “shared future”, it doesn’t seem to feature at all in their thinking.”

This is Garland’s conclusion. You will note that it does not draw together the themes of the article, because, in this particular piece, themes were virtually non-existent. It offers another unsubstantiated speculation on how the DUP might react to the realignment. Then it alludes to the Tories requiring inclusivity and denies the UUP is interested in fostering this. It offers no evidence to sustain this view and doesn’t address the glaringly obvious point, that if the UUP is not interested in moving beyond sectarian politics, why is it moving forward on the basis that it is and why is it seeking to link with a UK wide party which will have no truck with sectarianism?

I realise that I have wasted way too much time on a desperately poor piece of commentary. There are no doubt legitimate and coherent arguments which will be made against the Conservative / UUP link-up and I should concentrate on addressing those. But it makes me angry that this type of dross gets printed and that its author gets money for such lazy drivel. A series of unevidenced, vaguely sententious contentions with little thread to link them, does not comprise political commentary. What we are often offered in Northern Ireland’s papers, with a few notable exceptions, is way way short of that.