ANALYSIS:TOM ELLIOTT, whatever about his views on the GAA and gay pride marches, illustrated that he has organisational skills – talents that have been woefully lacking in the Ulster Unionist Party for a decade now.
Facing Basil McCrea from the eastern Lagan Valley constituency, Elliott mustered a convoy of Lakeland Tours coaches filled with his supporters from west of the river Bann to converge on the Waterfront Hall in Belfast on Wednesday night. They helped ensure a comfortable victory for him by 643 votes to 294, 69 per cent to 31 per cent.
He can organise, but can he inspire and widen his appeal beyond conservative Ulster unionism? That was the unanswered question after the votes were counted, and that is the daunting challenge for this 46-year-old part-time Fermanagh farmer, former Royal Irish Ranger and Ulster Defence Regiment soldier and senior Orangeman.
Over the past 12 years there were other UUP gatherings in the Waterfront Hall, mainly involving David Trimble, but also Elliott’s predecessor as leader, Sir Reg Empey, as the party tore itself apart over whether to embrace the powersharing principles hammered out in the Belfast Agreement. All those battles are over now. But there was a terrible cost to the internecine struggle. In 1997, the UUP won 10 seats in the House of Commons and took 258,000 votes. This year, through the link up with David Cameron’s Conservatives, the UUP failed to win a single Westminster seat and took just 103,000 votes. In the 1998 Assembly elections, it won 28 seats. Now it has just 17.
Most new leaders are permitted a honeymoon period to establish themselves, but Assembly elections are coming next May and Elliott must begin to prepare for that campaign. Any further dip in the party’s fortunes and it is difficult to see how and when the UUP could be revived as a serious force in Northern politics.
To win more seats, Elliott must hold what the party has and steal back some voters from the DUP or somehow persuade the tens of thousands of mainstream, centre-ground unionists to return to the UUP. He must exploit the notion of the UUP as a broad church by winning support from conservative, centre and liberal-minded unionists. At the moment though, he is viewed as firmly in the camp of the old guard despite his assurances that he doesn’t want the party to be a “cold house” for the likes of Basil McCrea and his supporters.
During the campaign, he made clear he was not the sort of unionist who would attend GAA games or gay pride events. On BBC Radio Ulster last Friday, he found it almost impossible to say he hoped Down would defeat Cork in the All-Ireland final, eventually fixing on the insipid line: “I would have no support for either of them but the interest would be in the Northern Ireland team.”
These comments annoyed nationalists and unionists, including the considerable numbers in Croke Park on Sunday or those who cheered on Down in front of their TVs. It missed where centrist unionism is at the moment. His remarks prompted former Irish rugby international and UUP candidate in this year’s Westminster election Trevor Ringland to threaten to resign from the party if Elliott did not quickly say he would attend the All-Ireland final next year if an Ulster team qualified. Ultimatums generally don’t work in Northern politics, but Ringland’s comments were borne out of frustration with Elliott’s reluctance to publicly promote the idea of the UUP as a party with a wide embrace.
It and his image – the front page of yesterday's Belfast Telegraphdescribed him as a "grey man" – are huge issues for Elliott and his advisers. If he is to mount a reasonable opposition to his chief and formidable unionist rival, Peter Robinson, then rather like St Paul he must be all things to all unionists.
