After Americans had voted in the war hero, General Eisenhower, to be his successor in the White House in 1952, Harry Truman famously remarked, “Poor Ike. He’ll say do this and do that and nothing at all will happen.”
Truman’s prescient comments were based on his political experience and an awareness that getting things done in politics is not like the army. I’m sure Doug Beattie can attest to the accuracy of that observation now that he has finally thrown in the towel as UUP leader.
The Beattie experiment was often entertaining but at no point could it have been described as a success. The once heralded promise of a Beattie Bounce has long since become a cruel joke depicting Beattie’s rocky reign.
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Doug Beattie always cut a strange type of political leader. Another unionist whose British military background propelled him above his natural political station, the hapless Captain Doug failed abjectly to establish his authority within a party notorious for indiscipline and farce, most glaringly apparent in his public admission that he wanted to lead the UUP into opposition at Stormont but had been over-ruled by his own party. This was the logical moment he should have walked away.
It is striking that, even amidst the greatest crisis facing the DUP in the post-Paisley era, the Ulster Unionists could not keep it together. Just as their main opponent continues to lick wounds inflicted from a bruising election in which they lost three seats, the UUP demonstrates once again to ordinary unionists that they are far from a credible alternative option.
The plight of the Ulster Unionist Party epitomises the declining fortunes of unionism in general.
Left to its own devices to run a one-party state for 50 years, their innate sectarianism and lack of foresight meant they botched the job. They spent the next 25 years pining for the past and the post-Agreement era deluding themselves that they could compete with the DUP on terrain more suited to the latter, decrying every change and reform in a time when such developments were always going to happen.
The UUP has never had a woman in a senior elected position. In 2003, just two of its 27 elected MLAs were women, and both joined Jeffrey Donaldson in defecting to the DUP a few months later (Norah Beare and a certain Arlene Foster). All 18 of the party’s MLAs elected in 2007 were men, just one of its 10 MLAs elected in 2017 was a woman and not one of its nine current MLAs is a woman. At least they’re consistent, eh?
In many parts of the north, little differentiates the UUP from the DUP. The two main unionist parties sing from the same hymn sheet on international affairs including their support for an Israel currently committing genocide in Gaza. It was the UUP health minister, Robin Swann, who was accused of impeding moves to access abortion services in spite of changes to the law to that affect.
During an interview in this newspaper last week, the one-time Ulster Unionist Party councillor and mayor of Belfast, Bob Stoker, observed that loyalist communities were “short of real leadership”. Given his party’s dominance of unionism for generations, it was an astonishing admission of the collective failure of unionist politicians to lead from the front, something apparent in the ongoing spate of racist attacks and riots overwhelmingly occurring in loyalist communities.
The reality of an evolving political environment, changing demographics and the inevitability of a border poll means unionists will continue to coalesce around the DUP, regardless of its self-defeating actions and policies
For decades, voices inside and outside of the party have preached that Ulster Unionism must provide the progressive, inclusive face of unionism in order to prevent what they hold dearest from being lost - the Union itself. Yet the stark truth is that the Ulster Unionist Party has never been in a place where it could comfortably assume the mantle of leading such an ideologically positioned party and movement.
The Ulster Unionist Party is not, and has never been, a liberal nor progressive party. Even the noise generated by Doug Beattie did not stand up to scrutiny, as the embarrassing speed with which he condemned the Camlough PSNI officers for celebrating Armagh’s All-Ireland triumph revealed. Lest we forget, Doug deemed that so serious that he announced on social media he had contacted the chief constable about it. A leader truly interested in taking a fresh approach would have been at Croke Park for the game, not competing with Gavin Robinson and Jim Allister in the outrage stakes.
The UUP cannot grow as a mini version of the DUP. Yet even if it were to reinvent itself as a relatively more inclusive and progressive party, the ground upon which an avowedly pro-Union liberal party could stand has narrowed considerably over the past generation.
The reality of an evolving political environment, changing demographics and the inevitability of a border poll at a time when the unionist base remains disillusioned and rudderless, has meant that unionists will continue to coalesce around the largest bulwark party, regardless of the self-defeating actions and policies of the DUP. As things stand, the UUP serves little purpose and is fast running out of time.
