Conservatives and Unionists set to announce final nine candidates.
The Conservatives and Unionists look set to announce their final nine candidates, filling out the full slate of eighteen, tomorrow morning. I'm led to believe that both the Conservative Area Executive and the Ulster Unionist Executive are scheduled to meet in order to rubber stamp the line-up. The apparent defection of Deirdre Nelson from the Northern Ireland Conservatives provides further corroborating evidence, and tells us one possible certainly didn't make the cut!
Presaging an announcement, the nine candidates already selected have biographies, added to the Conservatives and Unionists Facebook page. Sir Reg Empey and Owen Paterson appear in this morning's News Letter promoting the benefits of the New Force.
Let's be clear what that means. If the Conservatives win the election, Conservative and Unionist MPs from Northern Ireland will be able to play a full role in a Conservative Government. That includes being eligible to serve as ministers.
No other party standing in Northern Ireland at the election can offer this. It is worth remembering that the largest current party in Northern Ireland secures less than one per cent of the entire United Kingdom vote. The reality is that they are permanently in the lower divisions of UK politics. By contrast, Conservatives and Unionists will be playing in the premier league.
To listen to some commentators or parties here, you would think that the idea of having normal politics is an affront. These people seem to have their own selfish strategic interests in maintaining Northern Ireland as a political backwater – either from the standpoint of a little Ulster mentality or because they want to portray Northern Ireland as a failed entity. We believe that Northern Ireland deserves better.
Conservatives and Unionists will be backing a government committed to tackling our national debt, promoting economic growth, delivering social justice and strengthening society; we will improve our public services and maintain our security in an increasingly dangerous world.
It is only the Conservatives and Unionists who are committed to ending the scandal of double-jobbing that scars politics in this part of the United Kingdom.
In David Cameron, we believe that the United Kingdom will have a Prime Minister with the ideas, the energy and the determination to put our country back on its feet after years of Labour failure. One thing's for sure. We can't go on like this.
That’s why, when the election comes, we’ll be asking people in Northern Ireland – like their counterparts everywhere else in the United Kingdom – to vote for change.
Comments
Nevertheless, in theory I am supportive of this move and wholeheartedly accept the need for the removal of a sectarian/ethnicity based form of politics from Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland voters should have the same options at the polling view as all British citizens, else we are nothing but second class British citizens.
That said, even if the Tory Party was more acceptable to me (I think David Trimble would make a first-rate Major-esque leader) I think I would still prefer the PUP over the UUP, behind my favoured party Alliance. This is because I think Unionism urgently needs to be more open on class issues, our working class communities are in chronic decline, and I find the lack of religosity conerning their views on moral issues, eg, abortion, a real breath of fresh air. Of course the paramiliary, ahem 'links' and the pre-Cold War era Marxist Leninism outright class warfare would put me off.
However until that day im voting Unionist & Conservative because they are actually walking the walk when it comes to bringing normal politics to NI.
3000 versts lets us down :(