I blog here, I blog there, I blog every .... you know the rest.

This is article is written for Our Kingdom and it can be found here.

Lord Smith makes a handful of curious points pertaining to realignment of the Conservative and Ulster Unionist parties, currently being effected by David Cameron and Sir Reg Empey. The Liberal Democrat peer appears confused as to the nature of the Conservative and Unionist force which the two parties intend to create and inconsistent in his criticisms of Cameron’s unionism.

Reconstituting links between Conservatives and Ulster Unionists will not, as Lord Smith contends, further polarise politics in Northern Ireland, still less aggravate increased dissident paramilitarism. If anything the alliance will exercise a moderating influence on unionist politics, shaping a secular, inclusive movement, propounding the values of the Union. The new force will not be about exclusion, or representing one community, it will be about making a case for Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom which appeals to everyone in the province.

The Belfast Agreement, and subsequent tinkering at St Andrews, settled Northern Ireland’s constitutional status. That is the context in which David Cameron wishes to roll out national UK politics, for the benefit of voters here. He has no intention of altering the safeguards which the agreement created, or diminishing the British government’s commitment to respect Irish nationalists’ legitimate aspirations. Insofar as dissident republican paramilitary groups are in any respect sensitive to Northern Ireland’s internal political dynamic, reorganisation of two functionally unionist parties will not register on their radar.

Lord Smith argues that the UUP constitutes only a small rump of Northern Irish unionism and that neither party stands to benefit significantly from forging a link. He believes that David Cameron making a pro-unionist argument from an Ulster Unionist platform represents ‘dangerous posturing’. He might be correct that the UUP are a minority party within unionism, but the party shares the moderate conservative and unionist sensibilities of its larger brother. It forms an ideal vehicle by which Cameron’s unionist vision can be put before Northern Ireland’s electorate. The appeal of offering voters a real say in national politics, of affording them the same political rights and entitlements which those sharing their citizenship enjoy in Great Britain, should not be underestimated.

The Liberal Democrat party was the only putatively unionist group which failed to welcome the recent Calman Commission interim report on Scots’ devolution. Liberal Democrats in Scotland have developed the cosiest of relationship with the nationalist SNP. It is ironic therefore that Lord Smith accuses David Cameron of spreading his unionism thinly.

It seems to me that David Cameron is a party leader who is determined to argue the case for Union. Indeed he is the only party leader determined to argue the case for a United Kingdom, in all its constituent parts. His determination is not born of opportunism or cynicism; rather it is testament to Cameron’s bravery and his commitment to the Union.

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 retaine...
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