Jeff Peel's Diary

I suspect that the relationship between the Conservatives and the UUP will be brought to a speedy conclusion after the UUP’s admission that it has been in Orange Order inspired talks with the DUP about Unionist (AKA Protestant) unity.  I hope that David Cameron will act decisively to distance himself from Sir Reg and his coven of bigots. 

I was suspended as an Officer of the Conservative Party for suggesting that the UUP leadership systematically lied and only had a financial interest in a deal with the Conservatives.  Now it’s clear that the UUP leadership is systematically duplicitous and sectarian. 

There are many good and honourable people within the UUP that have been badly let down by their spineless leadership.  Now’s the time for them to say so.

Michael Crick’s View >>

I can’t recall a time when the pointlessness and ridiculousness of Northern Ireland politics came into sharper relief than yesterday after yet more ill-fated crisis talks at Hillsborough Castle.  Our politics were never exactly sophisticated – but yesterday were a master study in folly and absurdity.

There is no national clamour for devolution of policing and justice.  The general public has next to no interest in this academic attainment.  Most don’t even know what either means or entails.  Some, I suppose, appreciate that there is something in the Agreement that requires both achieved and that there is a crisis as a result.  Therefore the desire to see completion is so that “that lot at Stormont” might shut up.  It’s an annoying political contrivance that bores.  It’s also one that will result in more significant wastage of public funds.

Yesterday our rag-bag collection of political under-achievers failed again.  While the semi-interested public gaze was upon them they conformed to type and retrenched into the sectarian rat-holes from whence they came.  The DUP produced an uber-bunny of obfuscation i.e. Orange parades.  And hence elderly bowler-hatted men with a penchant for walking up and down streets were allowed to scupper progress.

I have no idea what the prognosis is for politics here.  If further proof were needed that our party-political system needs removed and replaced with secular based politics then I have no earthly idea what that proof might be.  Our politicians inhabit another place and time if they believe that how they operate even approximates to what passes for politics in any other democratic society. 

In the short term policing and justice arrangements should remain as they are with an interim agreement to defer devolution for another 5 years.  The two governments should mandate this.  It’s clear that our politicians are incapable of reaching consensus on such matters. 

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if, over that five year period, the absurd power-sharing arrangements that mandate consensus from tribal power blocs be dismantled?  We need to see the emergence of voluntary coalitions in Stormont – based on shared ideological values rather than pointless tribal affiliations.  In the short term that may only be achieved by banning party affiliations and having all-independent candidates that are willing to make our Assembly work. 

Let’s attract real talent.  Let’s remove the stigma associated with political office – namely the need to designate as one tribe or another.  The politics of Protestant and Catholic have failed at Stormont.  If we must have devolution let’s put in place real democracy where people decide.

Now that 3 Conservative nominees have withdrawn from the UCUNF candidate selection race, it is questionable whether there is anything of substance left in the so-called electoral pact between the Conservative Party and the UUP.

Sir Reg, on this morning’s Politics Show on BBC NI, made light of the fact that certain individuals were frustrated with slowness of progress.  He also repeated that his Party had an agreement with the Conservatives – like it was some type of legally enforceable contract. 

But Sir Reg simply doesn’t get it.  This pact is in a near-death crisis.

The problem is not just that Conservative nominees are withdrawing from the process – due, in no small part, to the fact that the UUP has been dragging its heels over candidate selection.  It’s also the case that the nominees, and a large cohort of local Conservative membership, are losing confidence in the Shadow Secretary of State and his advisers following last week’s Unionist pact talks with the UUP and DUP. 

Moreover, as David McNarry highlighted on this morning’s Politics Show, the UUP is determined to retain North Down.  However, how can it possibly do so when the incumbent MP shows such hostility to the Conservative Party and the leadership of her own Party? 

I do hope that Ian Parsley does not withdraw from the process of candidate selection.  Nothing will serve the Conservative interest more than a Conservative nominee for North Down being put up against the incumbent MP.  If she is selected and makes clear that she will not run as a Conservative & Unionist candidate then Parsley should be handed the canditature.  That will be fun to watch.

Mick Fealty, over on Slugger O’Toole, very rightly asks when Owen Paterson is planning to invite the other Northern Ireland political parties to Hertfordshire to meet the future NI Secretary of State?  Why did the talks only involve the DUP and UUP? 

And what about Danny Kennedy’s point, made yesterday at Stormont, that the talks were in the interests of the entire “pro-Union” community?  Why should the Shadow Secretary of State be organising such narrowly defined talks?  Why pander to this level of political blandness? 

The initiative was clearly about something Unionisty.  There’s something deeply sniffy about the whole initiative.  But, worse than that, it jusk looks and feels wrong. 

Owen Paterson is a really nice chap.  But sometimes he just doesn’t get it.  One is judged by the company one keeps and the meetings one organises.  His new-found ‘advisers’ are giving him bum steers. 

Owen – let’s return to a bit of aloofness from Northern Ireland’s political swamp.  The Conservatives should be preparing for government in ways that makes them appear ready to govern.  Doing one-sided deals or holding one-sided talks with political dead-wood is all wrong – and no amount of spinning through quasi in-house blogs is going to help.