Is the UUP finally getting realistic?

The UUP held its annual conference this weekend and newly-minted leader Mike Nesbitt wanted to present a new face to the media. First, he spoke about the party going into the role of the official opposition if such a role were created within the consociational power-sharing structures that have been in place since 1999. Second, he declared the party to be non-sectarian and open to Protestants, Catholics, Buddhists, and atheists alike. This is certainly a different party than that of Lord Brookeborough who spoke of a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people. But how much of a difference is this likely to make in the short term?

The UUP Leadership Contest

It is official--there are three candidates to fill Tom Elliott's shoes as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) in Northern Ireland. They are: Deputy Party Leader John McCallister; Rural Development Minister and MLA David Kennedy; and MLA Mike Nesbitt, a former UTV anchor/presenter.  McCallister leads the liberal wing of the party and is being supported by his friend Basil McCrea who lost to Elliott in the previous leadership election in September 2010. The election will be at the end of the month.

Traditionally liberal candidates have not done well in UUP leadership elections. The last closest thing to a liberal was Terence O'Neill who resigned as prime minister in April 1969 at the start of The Troubles. Typically the right wing reactionaries also do not prevail in the UUP, although Lord Brookeborough who was prime minister for twenty years from 1943 to 1963 would fit that category. Bill Craig, the leader of the Vanguard paramilitary movement and faction within the UUP failed to win the election to succeed O'Neill in 1969 and the election to succeed the successor, Robin Chichester--O'Neill's cousin, in 1971.

The Ulster Unionist Party's Leadership Problems

Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Tom Elliott announced Thursday evening that he would be stepping down at the end of the month as party leader. Elliott was elected after the general election in mid-2010 after the resignation of former leader Reg Empey, who had been leader for five years. Empey resigned because the merger with the mainland Conservative Party under the label of Ulster Conservatives and Unionists--New Force  cost the UUP its only remaining MP, Sylvia Hermon, who identified more with the British Labour Party than with the Tories. The party lost a number of its voters either because they didn't like the Tories, or because faced with a new party name they opted for the more familiar label of the rival Democratic Unionists (DUP).  The same thing had occurred in South Africa in the mid-1970s when the venerable United Party gave up its familiar name after merging with a paper party. Many voters in Natal, its heartland, defected to the rival ruling National Party. The New Republic Party lasted for less than eleven years before it went out of business.