But how does the UUP build a centre-ground relationship with the SDLP if, at the same time, they seem to be working together with the DUP to unseat the probable next leader of the SDLP? How do they build a coalition - which may even embrace the Alliance Party along with the SDLP - if there is a unionist electoral pact geared towards the winning back of SDLP and Alliance seats in the next Assembly election? In other words, how do you create the sort of inter-party relationship required to boost cooperation and consensus in a power-sharing Executive if unionists build a communal bloc which inflicts electoral damage on the SDLP and Alliance?Quite and if we can't replace it, what then is the best option from a Unionist point of view?
My problem at the moment is that I don’t have an answer to those questions. And if we don’t find answers to those questions then we won’t, collectively or individually, be able to repair the dysfunctional nature of the Executive and replace it with structures that deliver the sort of devolution we thought we were voting for in 1998.
Update
I can't imagine the news of this will help Alex with answering his problem:
Orange Order convened secret unity talks between the two main unionist parties, the DUP and UUP, in early December.Bad to worse.
Party leaders Peter Robinson and Sir Reg Empey attended the talks at the Orange Order's headquarters in Belfast.
The BBC's Hearts and Minds programme said the two parties discussed the possibility of electoral pacts and forming a unionist bloc at Stormont.
The talks did not involve the Tories, the UUP's current election partner.
4 comments:
"The very fact, too, that both McCann and Davidson have no difficulty in describing themselves as "Catholic unionists" worries me as well, for it suggests that they buy into the very sectarianism they claim to oppose."
VS
"I could count my Roman Catholic/nationalist friends on the fingers of one hand. The social circles I move in are Protestant/unionist circles."
Shane,
I'm not sure there's a contradiction there. His second quote states a fact of life in NI, there exists 2 separate and independent civic societies which by and large don't have any contact or involvement with each other. That doesn't make those involved in those separate groupings de facto sectarian.
The religion of Davidson and McCann shouldn't have mattered and I also don't think that it should have been used it as a prospective selling point.
Anonymous
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