Empey's campaign has suffered a setback but DUP appears unscathed by Robinson scandal, writes DAVID ADAMS
THE UK Conservative leader David Cameron landed a telling blow last month in his election campaign. The problem is it was squarely to the chin of Sir Reg Empey, the leader of Cameron’s Ulster Unionist allies in the bizarrely titled Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force.
Sir Reg is contesting the South Antrim constituency, and has – or at least he had until Cameron’s intervention – a reasonable chance of unseating the DUP incumbent, Rev William McCrea. Moreover, he is his party’s only realistic hope of a Westminster seat, and rumoured to be in line for a junior ministerial post in a Cameron government.
The UUP had previously been contentedly, if unspectacularly, trundling along, talking up the benefits of being allied to “probably the next party of government at Westminster” and lobbing an occasional holier-than-thou grenade at the DUP leader, Peter Robinson.
It all went wrong when, in a BBC interview, Cameron cited Northern Ireland as best illustrating an earlier claim of his that “in some parts of the UK the state accounts for a bigger share of the economy than it did in the communist countries of the old eastern bloc”. He went on to reiterate his belief that this situation is “unsustainable”.
The people of the North recognise a threat when they hear it, and their well-developed sense of entitlement guarantees that they won’t take this one lying down.
Cameron is right; the North is far too reliant on the public sector, which accounts for 70 per cent of GDP and 30 per cent of all employment.
Moreover, nearly every Northern party, including the DUP, bemoans the fact. But none of that counts for much in an election campaign. For the past week, the DUP has been accusing the UUP of being in cahoots with a party intent on making paupers of us all. Suddenly, being allied to “probably the next party of government at Westminster” doesn’t seem like such a good idea. Sir Reg’s and his party’s Westminster prospects may have been scuppered by Cameron.
As for Peter Robinson, it is unlikely he or the DUP will suffer adverse voter reaction to his well-publicised marital problems or a report by the BBC into his role in an east Belfast land deal. The public has been sympathetic to him on the former, and the BBC failed to uncover any evidence of wrongdoing in the latter.
Unionists of all shades are so convinced of a strong anti-unionist bias at the BBC that the broadcaster may have inadvertently helped Robinson.
Iris Robinson’s former constituency of Strangford should be held by the DUP and, far from being outflanked on the right, Ian Paisley jnr should comfortably see off the challenge of TUV leader Jim Alistair, to inherit the North Antrim seat vacated by his father.
For all that has been levelled at Gerry Adams recently, neither he nor Sinn Féin look set to suffer much at the polls either. It isn’t as though Northern electorates entertain any illusions about what may be wrapped up in personal histories.
The Sinn Féin incumbent, Michelle Gildernew, will probably be ousted in Fermanagh and South Tyrone but that will be down to unionists fielding a single candidate, rather than to her being deserted by the nationalist electorate. The refusal of the SDLP, on anti-sectarian grounds, to countenance an agreed nationalist candidate there has caused anger within Sinn Féin. The SDLP maintains that tribal electoral pacts promote sectarianism, whereas Sinn Féin argues that while such arrangements are driven by sectarianism if cobbled together by unionists, they make political sense where nationalists are concerned.
Ironically, the SDLP’s Alistair McDonald is likely to remain as MP for South Belfast, due to a failure by unionists to agree on a single challenger there.
A combination of personal popularity in the area, tactical voting by some unionists, and a Sinn Féin challenger who suffers from a lack of popular appeal, should see the steely new SDLP leader, Margaret Ritchie, elected to the South Down seat from which her colleague Eddie McGrady has just retired.
Her predecessor, Mark Durkan, should hold Foyle, allowing the SDLP to retain three MPs.