The odd good joke aside, there was something unusually dull about the DUP’s weekend conference. How times have changed.

 

Yes it was really well organised.

 

It was slick and everything a modern, media savvy, political event should be – including the first ever live television broadcast of an Ulster party conference.

 

Of all the local parties, the DUP is now undoubtedly leading the way in terms of professionalism and organisation.

 

But if that is a positive reflection of the character and ability of new leader Peter Robinson, it is also a reflection of his eye for detail and controlling approach (and the position the DUP is now in, as a party of government) that proceedings lacked the heart and soul, of times gone by.

 

It used to be that you could depend on the DUP to be the highlight of conference season; like them or loathe them, you were assured stirring speeches, barbed (wicked) political comment and often hilarious comedy and satire.

 

Even the media in attendance would be forced to suspend impartiality for a moment, unable to resist a giggle

 

Ok, that’s not what serious politics is primarily about – and it was the stuff of Opposition, when the DUP is now engaged in a serious business.

 

But if you can’t stir the party faithful, boost morale and release the pressure at the conference, once a year, then when can you do it?

 

Not that the DUP conference has been an annual event in recent years; it was a couple of years since the last one.

 

And, perhaps, that was part of the problem.

 

Gone was Ian Paisley – no longer leader and at a church engagement in Liverpool; the days when he held an audience captive over.

 

Absent too was party prankster and conference court jester Sammy Wilson – attending the civic reception for the Armed Forces in Larne.

 

And also lost was the savage and sneering wrath of the Peter Robinson, of old. Replaced by the milder mannered statesman, that must befit the position of First Minister.

 

In short, the entertainment value was thin on the ground.

 

Jim Allister’s name raised a couple of pantomime boos and hisses.

 

And there was just the odd joke.

 

Nigel Dodds raised a laugh when noting that Sir Reg Empey had courted the PUP, Tories and TUV. “Next it will be UTV,” he quipped, “is Ken Reid here? He better watch out.”

 

Jim Wells and Edwin Poots chipped in, and the leader even ventured down the road of wife Iris not being one for the spotlight.

 

But ultimately, it was standard political fare and not what we had once been accustomed too.

 

In an era where political characters have become thin on the ground, it seems even the DUP has conformed to the template.

 

Party supporters can rightly argue it is not characters but safe hands and assured policies that people will vote for.

 

But regardless of that, the DUP and local politics are increasingly swapping colour for shades of grey.

 

Sir Reg Empey’s talks with Jim Allister seems to have left the UUP leader open to jibes that he is never done looking to do pacts and deals – even with the unlikely bedfellows of his rivals in the TUV.
But is at blunder of bigger proportions or commonsense pro-Union politics?
Since taking the helm of the Ulster Unionists, three years ago, there has been an Assembly pact with the PUP.
Then there is the on-going coalition talks with the Conservatives.
Now there’s voting strategy discussions with the TUV.
Not to mention the often suggested, but yet to happen, meeting with the DUP to assess potential electoral deals.
In his defence, the UUP leader is using his position, positively, to explore the potential for maximising the unionist vote and ensuring pro-Union parties work together on matters relating to the Union.
On this occasion, he has explained there is “definitely no pact” with the TUV but simply an agreement that unionist parties should encourage widespread use of the transfer system in elections to ensure their supporters transfer to other pro-Union candidates.
But in talking to the TUV, before the DUP, has the UUP leader made a mistake, offering a lift up to the TUV, perplexing his own party members and rattling Peter Robinson’s cage?
He has certainly angered the DUP leadership – said to be furious at the development and, rightly or wrongly, viewing this as some sort of UUP-TUV signal that they are the two parties entitled to the two European seats winnable by unionists next June!!
I understand that the UUP-TUV meeting was rather hastily arranged between the UUP and TUV on Monday morning – and at the TUV’s request.
The TUV then prepared the short statement that went out – though it was cleared by the UUP and released by UUP MEP Jim Nicholson also.
Sir Reg, at one stage, was not sure about even publicising the discussions.
But the TUV pushed ahead, and hence Jim Allister pulled off a small but significant propaganda coup.
Here was the MEP portrayed as a co-equal (electorally) and engaged in the type of pro-Union discussions that, until now, Peter Robinson has only talked about.
What impact this has on the already fragile UUP-DUP relationship remains to be seen.
The UUP Executive has given itse party leader the go-ahead for a meeting with the DUP chief (on electoral strategy) – but are those dicussions now less likely?
Or worse still for the UUP, in sitting shoulder to shoulder with the TUV, has Sir Reg sent out the message that his party is (in European elections) of the same standing as the TUV, rather than tens of thousands of votes ahead, as it would have expected to be.

Read more about the UUP-TUV talks..

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/politics/Sir-Reg-rejects-talk-of.4587618.jp

Apologies. It’s been a while since the last blog. Excuses include illness and a heavy workload. Time to get back on track…

Chatting to victims’ campaigner Willie Frazer this morning, he informs me that a delegation including him and MP Jeffrey Donaldson will meet with Labour MPs and members of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee at Westminster next week – to discuss the British Government’s refusal to support the compensation case against Libya for its sponsorship of the IRA.

There is some concern among MPs, including Labour’s Andrew McKinlay, that first Tony Blair and now Gordon Brown have completely ignored the victims’ legal bid to hold Colonel Gadaffi accountable for his supply of millions of dollars, training, weaponry and Semtex , during the Troubles.

The recent deal struck by the American administration, which will grant the re-opening of economic and diplomatic links with Tripoli, in exchange for pay-outs to the US victims of terrorist atrocities linked to Libya (including IRA bombings), excluded UK victims – even though they were part of the lawsuit in the court system Stateside.

Questions have since been asked as to why the UK Government has not used its leverage with Gadaffi, in the way that the Bush regime went into bat for its citizens.

Gordon Brown recently wrote to solicitors H2O – representing the victims in Northern Ireland – to basically say, Libya is now the UK’s friend and it is not in the nation’s interest to pursue Gadaffi for his crimes.

But there is some speculation that victims from the Province could now mount a legal challenge to the Government, for failure to protect their rights.

Next Wednesday’s meeting will be crucial to establishing whether pressure will be brought to bare on Brown, from within the Labour Party.

But outside the pages of the News Letter, which first broke the story of the Libya lawsuit and has followed it in detail, it has been surprising how little coverage this case and the settlement in America has received.

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/politics/Hopes-of-compensation-for-IRA.4348074.jp

Gerry Kelly’s appearance on the BBC documentary about the Maze Prison breakout seems to have struck an emotive and negative chord with many in the unionist community, given the reaction flowing into the News Letter this morning.

Accusations are also flying around that the BBC glorified the IRA and turned the prison escape into some type of Steve McQueen-style, romanticised adventure. 

But looking at it from a purely political perspective, you have to wonder what the Sinn Fein propoganda machine was thinking of?

At a time when it is desperately trying to convince unionists to devolve policing and justice, its policing and justice spokesman is on primetime tv, eulogising his terrorist past and an event in which a prison officer was murdered.

The timing, in terms of the current political impasse, could not have been worse.

If the outrage being expressed here, is replicated in DUP constituency offices up and down the land, it genuinely will give DUP leader Peter Robinson even less room to move than he had before.

And the crowning irony?

Junior Ministers Kelly and Donaldson are now in New York to accept a Peace Dove award!

The often vaunted choreography of the peace process seems to be badly awry.

THE DUP’s tactic of fielding Arlene Foster in the Enniskillen by-election worked – in that it spared it any Dromore-type blushes and saved the seat from the clutches of Sinn Fein.
It also increased its share of the first preference vote, from 28.2 per cent in 2005 to just over 30 per cent, this time out. So, job done; a welcome boost for leader Peter Robinson; and a triumph for Mrs Foster, given that she was the one who put her own career on the line.
But the DUP may well be taking note of points of concern too, given that everything in this election was in its favour and the conditions suggested a Foster win.
Unlike Dromore there was no Traditional Unionist Voice candidate to undermine the Mrs Foster’s tally.
She also ran as a popular and high profile candidate – way ahead of the rest of the contenders and the UUP entry (Basil Johnston), in terms of familiarity and standing.
And the UUP tactic of forcing a by-election for a seat vacated by the death of DUP Councillor Joe Dodds, was always a high risk move which was never the way to go about winning friends and influencing people.
Yet the DUP’s biggest rivals, in the UUP, still managed to hold-up their end of the vote; meaning they are again able to crow that rumours of their political death had been greatly exaggerated – they do seem to have turned a corner.
At a glance, however, the big underlying story of the Fermanagh election has to be the slump in the nationalist vote which, for whatever reason, just did not turnout in big enough numbers.
This was disastrous for the SDLP – down from around 18 per cent of the vote share in 2005, to just 11 per cent this time (from a party which 10 years ago was leading nationalism, under John Hume).
This could also have had an impact on the party’sr thinking over future options – including whether or not to amalgamate or form a pact with Fianna Fail.
And Sinn Fein too will be trying to calculate if a general nationalist apathy has cost them, in terms of both first preference votes or transfers.
In 2005, the combined Sinn Fein/SDLP vote was 4070. This time (noting the 158 votes that went to independent republican candidate Karen McHugh and overall turnout was down) it was 2554 – where did around 1,500 people disappear too?
** First preference votes in the Ennisikillen by-election 2008: Arlene Foster (DUP) – 1,925; Debbie Coyle (Sinn Fein) – 1,816; Basil Johnston (UUP) – 1,436; Rosemary Flanagan (SDLP) – 739; Dr Kumar Kamble (Alliance) – 231; Karen McHugh (Independent) – 158
Turnout – just over 50 per cent. Total votes cast – 6,380
First preference votes, per party, in the 2005 Enniskillen vote: SF: 2,486 (28.5%), DUP: 2,454 (28.2%), UUP: 1,785 (20.5%), SDLP: 1,584 (18.2%), Soc Party: 406 (4.7%)