A Tangled Web

The Friday Essay



DEATHSTAR – CUNNINGHAM HOUSE.



Ever see the Star Wars movie where the bad guys’ huge spacecraft looks utterly invulnerable until it comes under sustained attack by the opposition? At first, one small crack appears in it, then quickly another, than a chain reaction of explosions and then …it’s explodes into a million shards. Well, the Ulster Unionist Party could audition for the script!



The Trimble years are coming to an end. When exactly this will occur is hard to say – but the next General Election, expected in 2005, will mark the finishing line for Trimble since he will undoubtedly lose his Westminster seat in Upper Bann at that point. I believe he will have fled by then. Either ennobled and elevated to the Lords or rewarded and packed off to the EU/UN, he will have escaped just before the UUP Deathstar explodes. The poor suckers that lacked the courage to get rid of him when they had the chance will then stand amongst the burning debris of their once all-powerful political party and wonder how it was that the “natural party of government” met up with natural selection. Darwinism also applies to political parties!



By any standards, the UUP is already cripplingly wounded. Now the minority unionist party in the Assembly, reduced to the minority unionist party at Westminster, UUP fortunes have plummeted whilst Trimble’s have ascended. At first this seems odd. How can a political leader thrive whilst his party falls apart? Surely this makes no sense?



The truth is that Trimble’s elevation was always media driven. He never carried the popular support that endless media polls suggested. This latter day straw-man has been propped up for years now by supine pro-Agreement media players. Salivated over as a man who would take “risks for peace” (translates “will sell out his every stated political principle”), Trimble was a walking disaster. But he was nicely presented for UUP rank and file dullards. He was an educated man. That always goes down terribly well in a party where intelligence is not always immediately discernible (See under; Sam Foster, Jim Dillon, George Savage.) He could even string together half a dozen words and manage not to sound as robotic as Michael McGimpsey, as wimped out as Sir Reg Empey, or as formularised as Dermot Nesbitt. He was a giant amongst pygmies!



But being propped up by an understanding media only goes so far and only lasts so long. The reality is that Trimble’s track-record of broken-promises and policy u-turns could not be permanently explained away. In essence, he’s been rumbled by the unionist electorate. The little coterie that surrounds him constantly fails to accept this. They are in denial. They insist that the unionist electorate is to blame for allowing itself to be “conned” by the DUP; they whinge that the IRA is to blame for not honouring its word! (As if….). They moan that the Government is to blame for not being more accommodating to pro-Agreement Unionism. In short, they blame everyone but themselves.



Curiously, even after the Assembly election results, there are some sycophants in the press who continue to present Trimble as the only way forward for the Ulster Unionist Party. Naturally, these are the same people who consider Mark Durkan to be an able leader, who think the Alliance Party is a formidable force.



Let’s be clear. Trimble is now irreversibly on his way out. The real problem is that he has positioned his Party where it has no way out. How can it be more anti-Agreement than the DUP? It can’t! How can it be more pro-Agreement and yet win back lost unionist votes? It can’t! Has it anyone capable of effective leadership? It hasn’t! (Not unless Empey and Rodgers are viewed as a dream ticket and surely no-one could imagine that without the assistance of illegal pharmaceutical substances!)



The Ulster Unionist Party has only one place to go. Backwards! It cannot ever again position itself as a Party of the Union for the simple reason that under Trimble it has moved to a post-Union platform. Worshipping at the shrine of the Belfast Agreement, it should junk whatever remnants of Unionism it retains and re-position itself as I have previously indicated (See under “The New Alliance”)



Unionism is coalescing around clear anti-Agreement principles. That is where the electoral winners are to be found. As Cunningham House is reduced to the status of a care home for the politically challenged, it can be said; rarely have so many lost so much for so little!



Sitting on his ermined robe, I doubt Mr. Trimble will concern himself unduly.