NI POLITICS: The Hunter hunting Trimble
How the Belfast Agreement saved the DUP
On Monday 7 October, Theresa May, the Tory Anne Robinson, told the assembled Bournemouth delegates how nasty they were. That evening, a few hundred miles away, a former Tory MP stood for nomination amongst people, who, one suspects, would make Mrs May blanche.
Of course, the members of the Lagan Valley Imperial Unionist Association, as the Lisburn activists of the Democratic Unionist Party style themselves, could reasonably claim that they’re not nasty, except to Sinn Feiners or biased journalists. But they are hardly Portillistas. It’s into that world that former Tory MP Andrew Hunter has plunged as a prospective DUP Assembly candidate. (Hopefully no one at the selection meeting knew that in 1985 he voted in the Commons in support of the Anglo-Irish Agreement.)
Mr Hunter is not the first Conservative figure whose sympathy for Ulster unionism has led him to stand in the province. Nor, to be honest, is he the most significant of those who previously have. Mr Hunter, a solidly right-wing Monday Clubbing, Bopping backbencher for the Tories will slip easily into that role for the DUP in the Assembly should he be elected should there be elections. It is, however, significant that an establishment figure like Andrew Hunter should link up with those most anti-establishment of politicians because it shows the shifting tectonic plates of unionist politics. He is moving from a party led by The Quiet Man to one led by a man who is quiet only when asleep (assuming Big Ian doesn’t snore).
The Assembly elections of 2003 look like doing to the Ulster Unionist Party what the general election of 1997 did to the Conservative Party. The parallels are startling: strategic mistakes at leadership level, serial breaking of promises, civil war in the party, lack of leadership authority, awful electoral performances, complacency at the top, defections to the opposition and decline of membership. In fact, arguably, things are worse for David Trimble than they ever were for John Major. The Man in the Blue Underpants never had to face his party’s activists in as many crunch votes as Mr Trimble has.
Many people misunderstand Ian Paisley. He might top the poll for every European election beauty contest, but his party has never outpolled the UUP in any other election in its history apart from one. The Belfast Agreement has been crucial to the revival of the DUP from the doldrums. It sparked a grassroot revolt within unionism and left Mr Trimble’s party in a precarious position. The DUP was not the inevitable beneficiary of this shift. Bob McCartney’s UK Unionists might have siphoned off anti-Trimble, anti-DUP people if they hadn’t split in 1999. The DUP stayed together, has benefited from its activism in its Executive posts and, thanks to David Trimble, is closer to the centre of unionism than ever before.
The 2001 general election saw the DUP gain three seats. Just as important was the fact that they lost a further three seats by a margin of 2000 votes or less. Leader Trimble was saved by the collapse of the Alliance Party, which passed a few priceless votes to his own candidates. Even after that debacle, his internal UUP critics failed to depose him and some of Jeffrey Donaldson’s Praetorian Guard in the Young Unionists decamped to the DUP. The UUP is left to hobble on, weakened and divided, now without an Assembly that was always its main selling point for the Agreement. Meanwhile, the DUP sharpens its claws, relishing the opportunity next year to expose Mr Trimble’s bankruptcy.
Of course, the DUP does have members and supporters who really shouldn’t have been let out of the asylum. But the stereotype of foaming clerics and politics by stunt seems consigned to the past. People like Peter Robinson, Nigel Dodds and Gregory Campbell have established themselves as skilled articulators of the anger felt by most unionists. Some of its supporters criticised the party for taking up its ministerial posts in the Executive and once upon a time the DUP would have happily thundered from the sidelines. But even their opponents have praised the DUP ministers for their performances in office — and competence in government has helped the party’s image enormously.
The death knell of the Major Government was when previously Tory business figures went over to New Labour. The same principle goes for the DUP. A well-respected English sympathiser like Andrew Hunter cannot fail to lend respectability to the DUP, a party that has often lacked it.
But why parachute Mr Hunter into Lagan Valley, Jeffrey Donaldson's constituency and fiefdom, where the DUP had its worst performance of the 2001 election? This is the reason. Mr Donaldson will be standing for the Assembly for the first time after having, by a piece of foolish Trimbleite factionalism, been barred in 1998. He is certain to top the poll and, under the PR system in operation, will probably bring in two running mates. That would give the UUP three seats as opposed to its current two. Mr Hunter’s presence on the Lagan Valley ballot paper may be enough to divide the four unionist seats in Lagan Valley into two apiece for the UUP and DUP. This would neutralise Mr Donaldson’s personal vote and count as a major DUP victory.
A few weeks ago in Belfast, I took my 83-year-old great-uncle out for his lunch on a pleasant Saturday afternoon. There was congestion on the main road (not Red Ken this time) so we took a detour — and promptly drove into a gaggle of stone-throwing yobs. Luckily the car wasn’t damaged, but a following coach full of pensioners wasn’t so lucky. The old man often talks of the despair that he feels at watching his community in north Belfast go to the dogs in an epidemic of petty crime and paramilitary thuggery. More and more people see that as a part of life under the Belfast Agreement. The DUP is the beneficiary.
— The Watchman
StormontWatch, October 17, 2002 08:54 AM