Opinion

ANALYSIS: Ulster Unionism struggles to find its voice

Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann with some of the party's elected representatives at Saturday's conference in Armagh. Picture by Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye
Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann with some of the party's elected representatives at Saturday's conference in Armagh. Picture by Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann with some of the party's elected representatives at Saturday's conference in Armagh. Picture by Kelvin Boyes/Press Eye

THE Ulster Unionist Party is suffering an identity crisis. The party was always something of a broad church yet it once seemed to know what it stood for. These days, however, the messages are too often mixed and the direction uncertain.

The party is keen to sell itself as an alternative to the DUP yet is unable to put enough clear blue water between itself and Arlene Foster’s party. Stinging salvos highlighting the RHI scandal and Ian Paisley’s Sri Lankan holidays were fired in abundance at Saturday’s conference; the Stormont ‘spadocracy’ was characterised as “grubby” and in urgent need of reform. In his second conference speech as leader, Robin Swann stressed that his party had no place for homophobia, sectarianism and racism.

They were valid points delivered with conviction, and they may discourage a few waverers away from the DUP, but such criticism alone is unlikely to see significant numbers of the electorate migrate back to the UUP. Scratch the surface and there’s nothing much beneath.

Sadly, you sense that the party knows this too and every year there appears to be fewer delegates attending the conference, an ageing membership failing to be revitalised by new blood and fresh ideas.

It’s only two years since Mr Swann’s predecessor’s floated the clumsy ‘vote Mike get Colum’ tactic, a short-lived strategy that courted a unicorn-like middle ground. It’s difficult to believe that the Ulster Unionists and SDLP were pooling ideas after the Brexit vote, as the former has since adopted a fatalistic approach to leaving the EU, which (mis)places faith in the British government. Saddled with unionism’s ‘UK as a whole’ mantra, the UUP finds itself sucked into the DUP’s slipstream, unable to offer alternative, pragmatic solutions to Brexit and the border for fear of being labelled ‘Lundys’.

With its contingent at a mothballed Stormont cut to a mere eight seats and its Westminster representation left solely to peers, the UUP struggles not only to find its voice but to be heard.

The fact that all eyes are on next year’s local government elections speaks volumes about the party’s ambitions. To borrow a phrase from its former leader Terence O’Neill, Ulster Unionism is at a crossroads but every route appears to be a dead end.