DUP MINISTER and Westminster candidate Arlene Foster has said she is prepared to stand aside for a unionist unity candidate in Fermanagh-South Tyrone if agreement can be found with rival unionist parties.
Ms Foster, selected to contest the constituency at May’s election, admitted she wanted to be the area’s MP. But she added that she would be prepared to leave the field if a single agreed unionist candidate can be found.
“Well, I’m not happy to give my Westminster ambitions up because obviously I believe as a unionist that the mother of parliaments is the ultimate, if you like,” she told the BBC yesterday.
“And so if I do step aside or need to step aside for a unionist unity candidate, it’s something that I will do because it’s in the better interests of unionism.
“It doesn’t mean necessarily that I wouldn’t want to be there on occasions, but if it has to be done it has to be done and I will do it.” The constituency is held by Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gildernew, the Stormont Agriculture Minister, who won the seat in 2001 by a majority of just 53. She retained the seat and extended her majority when she went head to head against Ms Foster in the 2005 Westminster election, winning by more than 4,500 votes.
Her comments about the desirability of unionist unity, especially in nationalist-held Fermanagh-South Tyrone and South Belfast, follow a series of speeches on the issue by DUP leader Peter Robinson and deputy leader Nigel Dodds.
Both have stressed the need for agreement, but relations with the Ulster Unionists have worsened following last week’s decision by the UUP not to support the devolution of policing and transfer of powers to Stormont. The decision by Ulster Unionists in Stormont to vote against the transfer powers was criticised at the weekend by the party’s sole remaining MP, Lady Sylvia Hermon.
She said she was disappointed at the failure of all parties in the Assembly to vote for devolution and to stand in defiance of dissident republican groups. “I wanted all of the parties in the Executive to stand shoulder to shoulder in the face of dissident terrorism and say, we’ve had enough, we are going forward together,” she said. “And I need leadership from my party. That’s what I wanted.”
Lady Hermon has already indicated she will not stand in her North Down constituency under the joint banner of the Ulster Unionists and the British Conservatives, insisting “I’m not a Tory”. She also said neither the DUP nor Sinn Féin were “enemies” of Ulster Unionists. The real enemies, she said, were in dissident republican groups and engaging in acts of violence.
Some of her party colleagues have stepped up their opposition to her defiant stance, criticising her publicly and accusing her of “muddled” thinking on the issue.
Fermanagh Assembly member Tom Elliott said: “What Lady Sylvia is doing now is far from loyalty to the UUP.”
With the Westminster election expected to be called soon, Lady Hermon is under growing pressure to announce her candidacy as an independent.