Let’s do something we don’t do very much and praise David Cameron. For whatever other failings he has displayed as a Tory, he’s shown none as a unionist. The most emphatic proof of this has lain in his repeated attempts to rebuild a Conservative relationship with the dysfunctional, electorally inept Ulster Unionist Party. In other words, why ever else he’s been doing this, it hasn’t been for easy electoral rewards. Those just aren’t going to come any time soon in Ulster, either care of the once-mighty UUP, let alone of the hopeless local Tories and their negligible levels of support.
The Tory leader’s latest, selfless offer to the UUP is that they should, in essence, adopt the same position to the national, UK-wide party as the Conservative Party does in Scotland. (And which it still will, after the election of Ruth Davidson). Tom Elliott, the lacklustre UUP leader, has dismissed out of hand any suggestion that his party should ‘disband’. Can we suggest that part of the problem lies in the simple matter of what a rejuvenated, UK-spanning Tory party should call itself in Northern Ireland? Lord Feldman proposes NICUP (Northern Ireland Conservative & Unionist Party), which is scarcely any better than UCUNF. Surely it would be far better, and, naturally, far more Tory if the Conservative Party in Ulster had a particularist name? Thus why not just keep the name UUP and run with that as the badge for the party’s candidates in the province, whether they’re standing for council, Stormont of Westminster elections? Soon enough, they’d be called “Tories” anyway by friend and foe alike in such a scenario. And we, if we’re going to be realistic about this, can dispense straight away with the fallacy that having the term ‘unionist’ more rather than less immediately prominent will cause any problems with would-be Catholic Tory-Unionist supporters in Northern Ireland. Catholics aren’t the problem, nationalists are, and there’s no point in trying to appease the latter. They’re never going to vote for us anyway.
Two other things, however, should be borne in mind when it comes to re-establishing a Tory party which stands, and wins, in all four corners of the kingdom. The first is that it a means to an end: the thing itself is the Union, which trumps any narrow sense of party (and is party of the reason why all good Tories should care rather more that Labour is competently led in Scotland than we are). And the second, paradoxical as this might at first seem, is that any Conservative realignment with the UUP should be merely a first step to absorbing the DUP. Tories should want pro-Union parties of the Union to be winning majorities in all four home nations. For all that the DUP’s unionism is sincere and unquestionable, their very existence as a provincial, stand-alone party does nothing to further the cause they claim they’re most attached to. We should want them too, and their seats too of course.