Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

When the UUP included Lord Empey on its candidate list for the Assembly election I accused the party of attempting to wriggle out of commitments on double mandates  on a technicality .  Eamonn Mallie reports that the former Ulster Unionist leader will not now contest his seat in East Belfast.  He notes "Reg Empey has set the bar on double-jobbing".  You can't say fairer than that.  Credit to the UUP for doing the right thing in this instance and taking the moral high-ground.

With the Republic’s general election done and dusted (not withstanding the small matter of forming a government), campaigning is about to get underway in earnest in Northern Ireland.  This morning the DUP announces its candidates for the Assembly, with polling for both Stormont and local councils set for 5th May. Alan in Belfast appears to have scooped this morning’s newspapers and the BBC.  You can read the complete DUP line-up and his analysis over at Slugger .  There are some signs of the party‘s much vaunted change of direction on the list, but it also contains its fair share of grizzled veterans. At Open Unionism O’Neill congratulates the DUP for its partially successful action on double mandates.  He notes that the party’s participation at Westminster has increased exponentially during this term and he chalks that up as one of the few positive legacies of UCUNF. It’s fair enough comment, but it should be said, the DUP has tackled double jobbing - except...

Arise Lord Reginald of Empey!  It's hardly an earth shattering surprise , but the news has been confirmed that Sir Reg will be elevated to a peerage.  Let this be the first blog to congratulate him on reaching Westminster at long last.   O'Neill points out that he will sit as a Conservative and no doubt he will be a useful addition to the Tory benches. Although Unionist Lite is correct that Empey's stewardship of UCUNF wasn't sufficiently brave, I still think he deserves huge credit for taking radical steps to revitalise Northern Irish unionism.  Two cheers for Lord Reg! Thanks to the anonymous commenter below who points out that Alistair Cooke , who taught at Queen's University Belfast, will also become a Conservative Lord.  

Tom Elliott has freshened up the UUP team at Stormont.  John McCallister is promoted to deputy leader, which will be interpreted as an olive branch to the party’s liberal wing.  He replaces Danny Kennedy, who takes Sir Reg Empey’s portfolio as Minister for Employment and Learning.  The rest of the changes can be viewed here . Although McCallister’s elevation might soothe fears that supporters of Basil McCrea will be ostracised under the new leadership, Elliott has simultaneously filled an executive post with one of his key allies.  Kennedy is an amiable politician, but his performances are often less than stellar. In the aftermath of Lord Browne’s recommendations into university funding and the Northern Ireland specific Stuart Review, the new minister’s in-tray is already full to overflowing.  He faces some exceptionally difficult and potentially unpopular decisions in his first year in office. John McCallister may be the shrewder of the two appointments. ...

The News Letter reports this morning that Sir Reg Empey is to step down within ten days, in order to let the UUP’s leadership battle begin in earnest.  Other contenders can then officially join Tom Elliott MLA, the only hopeful who has openly declared an intention to stand, in a contest which will culminate in a vote, open to all party members, scheduled for the 23rd September (or the 24th if you prefer to believe the BBC ). Certainly Basil McCrea will break cover and add his name to the race, once the formalities are taken care of.  Behind the scenes, his campaign is already cranking into gear.  He offers a liberal alternative to Tom Elliott’s traditional Orange credentials.  McCrea is known as a pragmatist who is happy to reach out across community boundaries and he is perhaps the party’s most polished media performer. There is a perception, however, that the Lagan Valley MLA’s ’bottom line’ - the detail of what he stands for and the fundamentals of his polit...

Taking up the theme I developed in yesterday's post, David Gordon writes about Ulster Unionist prospects for moving forward in today's Belfast Telegraph. The Ulster Unionists have to take a definitive line and stick with it.  Offering a drop of unionist unity from time to time, alongside a splash of Tory link-up and occasional helpings of middle ground liberalism, won't work.

I am more than a little confused by the signals which emerged from yesterday’s UUP Executive meeting. Sir Reg Empey is to stay, for the time being, and stand down during the autumn.  In the mean time the party promises a ‘forensic examination’ of what went wrong in its latest campaign and early decisions on a slate of candidates for next year’s Assembly elections. So Ulster Unionists intend, first to ink in candidates to stand for Stormont and then decide on a change of direction.  In that order. Now, clearly the UUP has taken the Westminster selection debacle to heart, but might the party’s future direction and new leader not determine who it wants to put up for election?  After all, there are at least three fairly different routes the Ulster Unionists might take. Reportedly Sir Reg could have claimed the backing of a substantial number of delegates yesterday had he chosen to remain at the helm.  He draws continued support particularly from those who are co...

The following piece was commissioned by a newspaper, but, as yet, it hasn't been published. Clearly, it will be out of date tomorrow, so I can safely post it here. The tone is rather downbeat. At the time it was written the cry of 'unionist unity' was at fever pitch. But the thrust of my piece is similar to the blog I wrote yesterday. This is a defining election for unionism. The stakes couldn't be higher. And with that I will post the article and go to vote - for Paula Bradshaw - the only candidate standing on a unionist prospectus in South Belfast. They say that success has many fathers while failure is an orphan. It is likely that UCUNF will be abandoned, unwanted, by its political parents, if it does not flourish in the general election. The child of a whirlwind romance between the UUP and the Conservative party, its birth created a sense of optimism among unionists, but it has hardly been a case of ‘happy families’ since. Sir Reg Empey, the matchmaker who...

Then there were eighteen. Or, accurately, seventeen, plus one trying desperately to wriggle out of it. Yesterday morning Three Thousand Versts revealed that posters and literature for Sir Reg Empey's campaign in South Antrim has already been printed. Thank goodness then, for the sake of the environment, that his candidacy has been confirmed. Ivor at Hand of History has the scoop .

Gordon Brown's election announcement signals a 29 day dash to the election finishing line. Which is all very well if you have your candidates, and their campaign team, ready to go. In seventeen out of eighteen constituencies Conservatives and Unionists at least have a Westminster hopeful in place. The eighteenth, outstanding constituency, remains South Antrim, where Adrian Watson was rejected , due to his propensity for immoderate outbursts. Reg for South Antrim? So who will fill the vacancy in a constituency which should offer the Conservatives and Unionists one of their best chances of a Commons seat? The best bet is still Sir Reg Empey. Three Thousand Versts is led to believe that literature and posters have been prepared, for a possible challenge to Reverend Willie McCrea by the UUP leader. Realistically, Sir Reg's leadership is now linked, inextricably, to the Conservative and Unionist project. However you assess his performance in recent times, Empey is one of its ...

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 st...

So that’s it? After a fortnight of work the so-called ‘Hillsborough Agreement’ (remember how great the last one was?) comprises twenty one pages and contains enough holes to sustain any number of mini-crises. We can only assume that this tacked together deal is underpinned by a network of behind the scenes arrangements between the DUP and Sinn Féin. Which is precisely the reason why this type of set-piece has proved necessary in the first place. With the UUP sitting out this morning’s proceedings, because the party had no input in the negotiations in the first place, the requirement of a functional executive is key to securing all-party support. Ulster Unionist anxieties on this score will hardly be offset by a commitment to set-up a working group on ‘Improving Executive Function and Delivery’. Rather than undertaking to establish genuine coalition at Stormont, the DUP and Sinn Féin are handing the smaller parties an opportunity to talk about it. And the working group and timetab...

A UUP member is circulating an email which has been forwarded to each of the party's Executive members (and indeed more widely). It voices severe disillusion with some senior party officers, particularly the party leader, its chairman and the treasurer. It intimates that other officers have not been kept informed fully of developments within the party. This party voted virtually unanimously for an electoral arrangement with the Conservatives at the European and Westminster elections. [edit] It is an indictment of their poor leadership and bad management that our Director of Communications has resigned ...... As many will know this is simply one in and string of staffing problems. The result of this woeful leadership is that we have let the DUP off the hook! .... It is time for the Executive Council of our great party to assert itself. It is the governing body of the Ulster Unionist Party – not the Officers or a small faction of the Officers. The Executive Council needs to make i...

The sudden resignation of Alex Kane, the UUP’s Director of Communications, is an unexpected blow for the party. Kane has a column in the News Letter and only this morning he was in invigorating form , demolishing any notion that the party should consider forming a pact with the DUP. Given the nature of his post, Alex’s articles were often a useful barometer to gauge the official UUP line. His attack on the DUP seemed to represent an unambiguous repudiation of ’unity’ rumours which surfaced over the past fortnight, timed to coincide with a meeting of the Ulster Unionist executive, due to take place tomorrow evening. Now we know that Kane quit, rather abruptly, on a Sunday afternoon, can we interpret his piece, not as a bravura rallying of the troops before a crucial internal meeting, but rather as a parting shot? It’s difficult to reconcile either interpretation neatly with the timing of the article. I’m sure that it was filed on Friday, rather than Sunday afternoon. Nevertheless,...

Owen Paterson is reportedly eager to meet Sir Reg Empey as soon as possible in order to discuss pre-Christmas ‘unity’ talks which the UUP held with the DUP, courtesy of the Orange Order. At the very least the Conservatives’ Northern Ireland spokesman will want a convincing explanation in order to clear the air. It is all very well for Ulster Unionists to sneer at the local Tories and their electoral pretensions, but the UUP has, at best, shown recklessness in protecting its link to a party which dwarfs it nationally. From the outset I have expressed anxiety on this blog that the UUP has not shown itself sufficiently committed to the project of pan-UK unionism. There has been, throughout the process, a suspicion that the party believes it can hedge its bets. The ink had barely dried on a deal when Sir Reg Empey affirmed that his party had an exit strategy available, if the pact did not yield immediate electoral benefits. The UUP’s North Down MP, Sylvia Hermon, could not have mad...

Does Alliance actually have a philosophy, beyond ‘we are much nicer than everyone else’? David Ford’s party certainly stresses its non-sectarian credentials, but that hardly qualifies as a political programme. With its haste to allege prejudice wherever it sees so much as a Union Flag, and its insistence that Northern Ireland’s politics are best conducted in a vacuum, Alliance is as dependent upon sectarianism as any other party. Last week David Ford lashed out at Sir Reg Empey when he suggested that Ulster Unionists will not endorse, sight unseen, any deal which the DUP and Sinn Féin might concoct on policing and justice. The UUP leader’s demand that his party should be consulted is hardly unreasonable. Ford’s reaction epitomises the spineless and rudderless nature of Alliance politics. Before Christmas he indicated that his own party would name a price for its cooperation in devolving policing and justice. Now, spooked by a suggestion that the Assembly could collapse, and with h...

So Sir Reg Empey has made it plain that, should the DUP strike a deal with Sinn Féin on policing and justice, Ulster Unionists will not necessarily snap to attention. It is not an extraordinary stance. It is far more extraordinary that other parties complain on other occasions about being by-passed by Sinn Féin and the DUP, yet they’re prepared to accept , without conditions, any arrangement which the two parties might reach. Policing and justice has acquired a status, actual and symbolic, which it scarcely deserves. Just because Sinn Féin determines that it is the must crucial issue at the Assembly, doesn’t necessarily mean that other parties become reckless renegades just because they do not share that analysis. It certainly doesn’t mean they are playing fast and loose with the principles of power-sharing. Remarkably Alliance itself had previously indicated that it was not prepared to facilitate devolved justice, at any cost. The Ulster Unionist party is quite entitled to put ...

“Don’t know what I’m doing here / I’ll carry on regardless”, sang the Beautiful South. It is a lyric which could have been written for Northern Ireland’s Education Minister. Caitriona Ruane proved incapable of striking an acceptable compromise on selection for post primary schools. Other parties continue to make progress towards an agreed position, but the minister carries on regardless. Similarly, her two bills aimed at establishing an Education and Skills Authority (ESA), which would centralise functions currently carried out by the five Education and Library Boards, as well as the CCEA exam board and the Regional Training Unit, have run aground at Stormont. However, in a statement delivered to the Assembly yesterday, Ms. Ruane set out plans to (you guessed it) carry on regardless of dissenting voices and start implementing the ESA project. The two UUP ministers, Michael McGimpsey and Sir Reg Empey, have delivered their response: “The statement made today by the Minister of Edu...

In his News Letter column Alex Kane emphasises the importance of the SDLP leadership contest to prospects of a constructive, workable Northern Ireland Assembly. In stark terms, if the moderate nationalist party cannot recover and challenge Sinn Féin’s ascendancy, then devolved government will continue along current lines, perpetuating a community tug of war which results in stasis. Although Kane is right to identify the Shinners as the principal obstacle to partnership, I do not accept his contention that it scarcely matters which party leads unionism. The DUP has contributed substantially to the current dysfunction at Stormont and it acts as a brake on progress. It might not share Sinn Féin’s paramilitary past, but it is also a party of carve-up, rather than partnership. Fault does not exclusively lie with parties on one particular side of the constitutional question. If Northern Ireland is to enjoy effective, efficient regional government and some degree of community cohesion,...

When four Ulster Unionists signed a letter of protest, attacking their party leader’s decision to forge an electoral pact with David Cameron’s Conservatives, I welcomed the opportunity to bring dissent out into the open. Roy Garland was one figure whose name appeared on the letter, and its contents reflected closely the preoccupations which colour his weekly column in the Irish News. In common with two of his fellow dissidents, Garland is no longer a UUP representative. He exercises influence through his articles (with which this blog frequently disagrees). After enduring months of innuendo and sniping through that medium, Sir Reg Empey finally chose to respond to Garland’s criticism in the Irish News’ letter pages, last week. Their differences have now been made explicit. I believe that this type of internal debate should have been fought, and won, earlier, in order to let UCUNF make its case to voters with unity of purpose. However the maxim ‘better late than never’ is applica...