British Conservative Party leader David Cameron will fly to the North today in an attempt to boost his party's bid for its first Stormont Assembly seat.
Mr Cameron will campaign on behalf of former Ulster Unionist junior minister James Leslie who joined the party last year and is attempting to win an assembly seat in North Down in the March 7th election.
However, Mr Cameron was challenged by Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey to state whether his party would register itself as a unionist or non aligned party if it were to win Assembly seats.
"David Cameron is a slick political operator, but can he answer some fundamentally important questions to the voters of Northern Ireland?" Sir Reg asked.
"There was a time when the Conservative Party on the UK mainland styled itself the 'Conservative and Unionist party', but Northern Ireland Conservatives appear to have a problem with the term unionist.
"Their 2003 Assembly manifesto claimed 'we are a party of the Union', yet it pledged the following: 'Any Conservative elected to the Assembly will refuse to play the sectarian headcount and will remain non-designated'.
"In the first instance, we are at a loss to see how anyone could claim to be a party of the Union and yet object to being designated as a unionist," Sir Reg said.