MIKE NESBITT’S decisive victory as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party brings a personable political newcomer to this venerable position in Northern Ireland when the party is sorely challenged by its recent electoral decline. The gap between its vote and that of the Democratic Unionist Party in Assembly elections increased from 20,533 in 2003 to 110,905 last year. Mr Nesbitt faces a formidable task to restore his party’s fortunes faced with such competition, however well he is known as a former television presenter, but with scant political experience.
He has few new policy ideas, supporting the party’s ministerial position in the powersharing Executive and resisting proposals that it pull out. He says politics is about power and has certainly demonstrated an ability to win it by reassuring his party’s several factions he can work with them. After its precipitous decline under the leadership of Reg Empey, who followed David Trimble in that role, and its right-wing lurch under Tom Elliott for the last 18 months, the party badly needs to stabilise and could do so under a more professional and media- savvy hand. Its dalliance with the Conservatives fell flat and it is now worried about slippage towards the liberal Alliance party.
Winning back support from the unionist middle-class who shifted to the DUP in those years may be easier for a man with his attractive personality – and conceivably too from the large numbers of Catholic middle class voters who say in polls they prefer a stabilised devolved North within the UK to a more uncertain united Ireland. Such people remain unwilling to support Sinn Féin and are disenchanted by the Social Democratic and Labour Party that was their political home before it too was politically outmanoeuvred and slumped in elections.
Last year’s Assembly elections confirmed these trends, which are being daily consolidated by the alliance between First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness in the Northern Ireland Executive.
Their respective domination of the political communities they represent will be exceptionally hard to displace. While there are signs of greater fluidity and crosscommunity engagement in Northern Ireland flowing from this hard-won political stability, its society remains deeply divided in education, housing and trust. Mr Nesbitt’s proclaimed aim to reach out to new supporters is welcome and is helped by his being the first leader of his party not to be a member of the Orange Order. Northern Ireland deserves such successes but faces definite challenges in coming years as it adjusts to economic and political changes in the wider United Kingdom.
Recently announced benchmarks for more regionalised public service pay levels will disadvantage its high proportion of such employees, for example. Nor should unionists get too complacent about the apparently reduced appeal of Irish unification to many Catholics when they contemplate the rapidly growing strength of nationalism in Scotland, which could undermine the UK’s own longer-term credibility.