A story still-born or still gestating?
It’s difficult to know what to make of Eamonn Mallie’s latest ‘exclusive’ at Slugger.
It’s hardly a secret that although Tom Elliott’s leadership win was popular among the UUP’s elderly and rural grassroots, some moderate activists were dismayed.
Rumours that disillusioned members would organise were inevitable and murmurs about a ’2010 Group’, prepared to protect some of the more inclusive aspects of UUP policy, actually pre-date the Elliott vs. McCrea contest.
The notion that ’national politics’ or ’pan UK unionism’ are ideas worth advocating was not going to disappear due to one disappointing and mismanaged election.
Mallie says that the group has met and even quotes a source, but I can’t help feeling that he has ’broken’ a story long before its gestation period is up. Metaphorically we have a few conjoined cells, rather than anything which the general public might recognise as a baby.
The fact that there are rumblings within the UUP, that something is up, is hardly an insight and it doesn’t constitute a story. People with an interest in the party have been ‘watching this space’.
Mallie is undoubtedly a fine journalist, with a finger on the pulse. I cannot understand why he hasn’t let this one run a little further until he had some detail, some people prepared to put their heads above the parapet and something worth reporting.
It’s hardly a secret that although Tom Elliott’s leadership win was popular among the UUP’s elderly and rural grassroots, some moderate activists were dismayed.
Rumours that disillusioned members would organise were inevitable and murmurs about a ’2010 Group’, prepared to protect some of the more inclusive aspects of UUP policy, actually pre-date the Elliott vs. McCrea contest.
The notion that ’national politics’ or ’pan UK unionism’ are ideas worth advocating was not going to disappear due to one disappointing and mismanaged election.
Mallie says that the group has met and even quotes a source, but I can’t help feeling that he has ’broken’ a story long before its gestation period is up. Metaphorically we have a few conjoined cells, rather than anything which the general public might recognise as a baby.
The fact that there are rumblings within the UUP, that something is up, is hardly an insight and it doesn’t constitute a story. People with an interest in the party have been ‘watching this space’.
Mallie is undoubtedly a fine journalist, with a finger on the pulse. I cannot understand why he hasn’t let this one run a little further until he had some detail, some people prepared to put their heads above the parapet and something worth reporting.
Comments
"most of the 2010 Candidates" "are against Unionist Unity" and are going to form a "2010 club" to advance that point of view". At the time I didn't think it important enough to blog on, I'm not sure that it is today.
But anyway if true, bearing in mind they are 5 months dowm the line and appear to have lost 3 of the higher profile candidates to the cause in the meantime (Bradshaw, Ringland and Nesbitt), it doesn't have the ring of competent dynamism about it.
While the UUP leadership are scrambling around to find out about this group is a very secretive, disciplined and more senior group working in the background to split the UUP at all levels and then move to the Alliance party or elsewhere?
Just a thought.