My position on the likely success or otherwise of the NI Conservatives is clear enough and I don’t intend to reinforce it to make it almost a self-fulfilling prophesy (the way opponents of UCUNF did). They must be given a fair chance.
However, since correspondents have asked, here would have been my advice prior to the Chairman’s recent visit:
- Don’t have an English, posh-speaking Lord launch your “Northern Ireland” party;
- Don’t keep talking about “national” politics if you want your party to be non-sectarian (in Northern Ireland that term is loaded);
- Don’t keep talking about “mainstream” politics (Conservatives may be “mainstream” in England, but not in Northern Ireland where the electorate has chosen a different set of five “mainstream” parties);
- Don’t base your new party in North Down - North Down is decidedly unrepresentative of Northern Ireland;
- Do have something to say to the people of Northern Ireland about something you are going to do for them (thus don’t bother trying to make a story out of telling your own membership about some Board you may allow one of them to observe in London);
- Most of all, don’t try to imply that some millionaire no one in Northern Ireland has ever heard of and who has rarely visited Northern Ireland knows what people in Northern Ireland want – there’s just an outside chance he has no idea.
Oh yes, and do clarify what you’re doing about Jim Nicholson. After all, in the next election due in Northern Ireland, that’s pretty relevant…
Ian,
What would be your advice on how they deploy the word “unionist” and the UK flag?
Don’t!
Problem is, it’s part of their culture that they will. They talk a good game on cross-community politics, but they do not understand the level of outreach and understanding that requires – including compromising on things they themselves view as quite important and innocent.
well i think i have made my feeling well known on this.anyway i will do so again i see no future for any ni tory party here.I cannot understand either bill manwaring or leslie mccauley joining them.there has been another uup member joining them see below.very politically naive all three of them
.A FORMER Ulster Unionist council candidate has defected to the Conservative Party due to his opposition to Tom Elliott’s leadership.
Neil McNickle, a former member of the Armed Forces, joined the UUP in 2009 but was unsuccessful in his bid to get elected to Lisburn City Council in 2011.
Mr McNickle said he had been having serious misgivings about Mr Elliott’s leadership of the UUP for some time and had considered running against Mr Elliott as a stalking horse candidate at the party’s AGM next month – but decided instead to leave and apply to join the Conservative Party.
“Right throughout Tom’s leadership I haven’t been entirely happy, for example, him calling people scum didn’t sit well with me,” Mr McNickle said.
“There has been a lot of talk about change in the party, but nothing has happened.
“Tom is a good man but there is a feeling that he is totally out of his depth.”
A number of former UCUNF candidates have recently defected to the Northern Ireland Conservatives, including Bill Manwaring and Leslie Macaulay.
I do recall not very long ago a blogger on here predicting with complete certainty that CCHQ would be closing down the NI Conservatives!
Do you? Perhaps you could find a quote to that effect?
yes i stand by my comments the ni tories are dead…
I am not referring to any comment you made Ian. Your correspondent Paul had been most definate of closure.
Equally Alex Kane was saying late last year that the Conservatives NI was due for closure at the behest of the leadership in London.
You had shrewdly kept an open mind, and did I think say there was all the play for.
Same can be said for the new parties fortunes wouldn’t you agree?
Some very silly absolutist opinions being expressed here.
Ah, understood. I refer to those as ‘correspondents’!
Would be interested to hear why there was a DUP-to-UU Cllr defection in Coleraine too!
PR Stunt and hype will get you no where.you have failed here and this last throw of the dice will finally finish you off.
Lord Feldman announced the formation of “a new political party in Northern Ireland” on January 31st.
The NI Conservatives —as were— will be replaced by this “new political party.”
The relationship will be almost identical to the relationship that existed between the UUP and Conservatives until the early 1970s.
Irwin Armstrong—in Monday’s News Letter—described this development as “something quite different to anything which has gone before.”
Lord Feldman said “This new political party won’t be encumbered by the conflict and divisions of Northern Ireland’s past. We want to reach out to everybody in Northern Ireland, regardless of their background.” The inference being that the NI Conservatives as they existed between 1989 and 2012 were regarded as encumbered and incapable of reaching out. Otherwise–why call it a new party?
Lord Feldman said he hoped that the new party would be able to put Northern Ireland back at the centre of national politics. Hang on! Wasn’t that supposed to have been the task of the 1989-2012 NI Conservatives?
Sounds very much to me as if the NI Conservatives—as they existed—have been closed down and replaced by a ‘new’ party. Albeit it turns out to be the “Oh-no-I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-the-Conservative-Party-party”
The NI Conservatives used to rail about the small, parochial, little devolutionary parties of NI. Hmm. Isn’t that precisely what they are in the process of becoming?
The NI Conservatives are registered here as the Conservative and Unionist Party: but they have always chosen (apart from the UCUNF fling) to stand as Conservatives. The fact that they now intend to use the Conservative and Unionist label for everyday use surely has to tell you something about “Conservative” as a stand alone brand.
I stand by what I have been writing about the Conservatives in NI.
Regards,
Alex.
Alex,
You don’t get it do you? Egg on your face yet you are trying to put a brave face on it.
The party will be registered as NICUP as that is the legal entity throughout the UK, but the practical use of the name will be entirely different. For example the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party is simply called the Scottish Conservatives.
And correct me if I am wrong but did the UUP pre-1972 have a seat at the board of the Conservative Party or call itself Conservative in elections, or was it directly controlled and financed by London. Was it in effect an integral part of the Conservative Party in quite the same way as this arrangement will be?
Can’t quite understand why you write so much and comment so much on this issue if its as unimportant as you suggest.
And where are you now is relation to the UUP? First you belonged to the NI Conservatives, then you were working for the UUP,then you weren’t, now you are supporting the UUP or what?
Getting back to what you said last year, that the NI Conservatives would be sidelined and a franchise arrangement whereby the UUP would become the franchisee would happen, clearly that is not the case. At least accept when you have been wrong.
It wasn’t Alex I was thinking of, actually.
I don’t regard this reincarnation as a new party at all, for the record. If it looks like the NI Conservatives and walks like the NI Conservatives…
I wish the many friends I have in the organisation well, but continue to suspect they are offering an answer to a question, post-devolution, that no one here is actually asking. I also just cannot get away from the underlying culture of wanting NI to be more like England – I don’t want NI to be more like England and I suspect I’m in a comfortable majority. The voters will determine that!
After the Alliance candidates they’ll be next on my card, but then they always were – and it’ll remain that way around from now on!
It is basically a rebranding Ian, taking into account devolution and the desire of the electorate for centre right politics of a more local flavour.
Everyone has a right to learn from past failures and try a fresh approach.
Quite clearly the UUP has no desire to do this, so we will.
If Alex Kane desires to continue supporting them in their road to nowhere good luck to him
I stand by my comments the ni tories are a dead party walking.noone has the slightest interest in any re branding or any stunts.the tories here have failed and will fail in this latest so called relaunch.
If no one has the slightest interest why are there defections? Watch out for a lot more. Alex Kane seems to have plenty of interest with all his articles!
The fact is there is an opening here for a new centre right party. One only has to look at the crumbling UUP to see that. Only recently one of its stalwarts David McNarry said it was heading for oblivion.
Alliance manage to sit on the fence with practically everything and apart from being the nice party most people don’t seem to know their policies. Their main policy seems to be we are not like the others.
You have been absolute in your opinions in the past Paul, and like when you, along with Alex Kane said the NI Conservatives were ‘dead in the water’ (his words), because of imminent closure from London, you were proven wrong. Watch the momentum this new movement takes and you could be proven wrong again.
There are no absolute certainties in politics.
Indeed there aren’t. But the NI Conservatives don’t seem to have learned Einstein’s lesson about doing the same thing over again and expecting different results. There is an opening for a new centre-right party, but not on the Unionist side of the fence. We already have two nominally centre-right Unionist parties. It is a centre-right Nationalist/Other party that is missing.
Put another way: all cats have four legs; my dog has four legs; therefore my dog is a cat.
There is a political gap opening up; we need a political gap; therefore we will inevitably fill the one that is opening up.
(That is leaving aside, of course, the possibility that in fact there isn’t a political gap anyway.)
There is a political gap, in that 50% of the electorate don’t currently vote for anyone. Whether that gap can be filled at all is another matter.
But talk of political gaps is short-sighted. True political leadership makes its own gap. People don’t always know themselves what they want until it is demonstrated to them. There was no gap in the market for iPads until they were invented.
Andrew,
Who is to say the NI Conservatives will make the same mistakes again?
Don’t know why you have to speak in such sectarian terms either.
‘Side of the fence’. What about a centre right party that can appeal to anyone?
An RC priest in Glengormley only said a few days ago that nationalist are challenging their allegiance to a united Ireland.
Your comments seem outdated in the light of that
They’re making the same mistakes by calling themselves a “Unionist” party. The word doesn’t mean the same thing in Northern Ireland that it does in England or Scotland. Even if Catholics/Nationalists aren’t keen on a UI, it doesn’t make them Unionists, nor willing to vote for an explicitly Unionist party. You may not see “Unionist” as an ethnic label, but plenty of other people do. One does not simply decide to become a Unionist, any more than one can decide to become Welsh.
The goal of a political movement that can appeal across the political spectrum is a noble one, but it won’t be achieved like this. If you persist in the delusion that “Unionist” and “Nationalist” are merely political labels like “Liberal” or “Conservative” you will solve nothing, because you have failed to accurately diagnose the disease.
there will not be anymore defections fact the ni tories would need a high profile mla of the likes of basil mccrea and john mccalllister to defect thats not going to happen.no point in trying to convince yourself never mind anybody else.the games up and you know it deep down
it wont be the ni tories tapping into that sort of opinion neither will it be alliance.
As I have explained Andrew the title is UK wide and changing that would require a UK wide change. In Scotland it is the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party but in practice it is simply ‘Conservative’. NICUP will not be the name in practice anymore than is the Ulster Democratic Unionist Party, the official title of the DUP.
And Paul, are you arguing the UUP is stable or not? If it isn’t stable, and when one of its leading figures says its heading for oblivion it clearly isn’t, then anythings possible.
When a ships sinking its usually the practice of those onboard to jump in several directions!
answer the question unless you get major high profile defections.which is very very un likely its game over..
I wish the new party the best of luck, though I share Andrew’s view that they have not taken the necessary steps to have cross-community appeal.
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