Vote Orange, Go Blue?

Will the Tories get anywhere by taking over the Ulster Unionist Party?

UUP supporters might not have quite the economic populism, or the moral and social conservatism, of DUP supporters (and MPs). But they are still essentially economic populists, and moral and social conservatives. After all, who isn’t? We are talking about Northern Ireland here. David Cameron and his ilk could not be further removed.

And it is true that the UUP are more British nationalists than Ulster nationalists, the DUP being in the true Scots-Irish tradition on both sides of the Atlantic, of willingness to kill or to die for the Union (whether British or American) exactly as long and as far as it delivers what the Scots-Irish want, beyond which they would be (and, on both sides of the Atlantic, have been) willing to kill or to die in order to destroy the Union.

But by no means all UUP supporters are Anglo-Irish, or pro-Union Catholic, instead. For that matter, large numbers of the Anglo-Irish and of the pro-Union Catholics must now vote for the DUP, as Ulster nationalist a party as Sinn Fein and the SDLP (and they are – Northern Ireland is the place that they know, love, and really understand, and for which they would fight like tigers in the structures of any future United Ireland), as the UUP used to be.

The UUP knows to whom, and why, it has lost votes. And it must therefore know how to get them back. Teaming up with David Cameron, of all people, will only drive even more away.