Having read Dr. Ashford’s checklist, I find myself being Liberal by definition. There are also so-called right wingers within the Conservative Party who tick all those boxes.

I am not totally surprised though. The Formation of the Coalition Government has exposed a faultline in the Liberal Democrat Party (the line between the Classical Liberals and the Social Liberals).
Some Lib Dems, including Nick Clegg probably feel more at home in an Alliance with the Conservative Party than they do when trying to promote their own populist pre-election agenda. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense for the Conservatives and Lib Dems to form an electoral pact for 2015.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland polticians, whilst they seem to be in favour of lower corporation tax with a view to growing the private sector will never tell you that they favour a smaller sized state. This is a great pity. It would certainly help political debate in Northern Ireland to move forward, if some of them did.

I start by quoting part of checkov’s analysis on the failure of UCUNF which I completely agree with

“There was a much more fundamental failure to properly develop underlying principles and cohere around them. The project’s philosophy was under-thought, under-realised with the result that it was eventually delivered stillborn to the electorate.”

That is not to say that I had any problem with what the Conservatives were doing nationally. The problem with the UUP is that it could not bring itself to adopting Conservativism. How could it? The UUP was, at the point of the link-up, a party with no underlying political philosophy outside unionism. Its politicians spanned much too great a distance across the left-right political spectrum. Sir Reg Empey was well aware of this when he said, in a statement published in the Newsletter:

“I think it needs to be borne in mind that the present Conservative Party is no longer a right-wing party in any real sense of that term. On a number of issues it is clearly to the left of Labour “

This was a rather fatuous statement to make. It has been said of me that I am embarrassed about unionism. I will come back to that. The UUP wanted the link to National Politics but they were utterly embarrassed about the Conservative Party’s ideology.

Pigeonholing certain people who hold certain political viewpoints is not easy to do. Putting Sir Reg in the category of Liberal Unionism or “not a hardliner” does not properly categorise Sir Reg. He may have been “liberal” by his positioning of the UUP in negotiations with other political parties but be was pursuing the objective of arresting and reverse his party’s loss of fortune.

Sir Reg’s experimentation and failure would have been fresh in the minds of the UUP membership. They may well have been, as you suggest, fed up with all of the changes which had happened to their party in recent years. Tom Elliott may have tapped into a yearning for a more “steady as she goes” leadership candidate. That may have been the membership’s view but it does not mean that Basil McCrea’s approach was less likely to win votes. Change happens. The DUP is changing.

Peter Robinson recently said on the Politics Show that his party was “Unionist Centre-Right.” In sharp contrast to Sir Reg Empey, he is not embarrassed to admit that his party has an ideology which will define its policies. I suggest that in due course, the DUP is likely to increase the emphasis on the fact that it is a centre-right party. If you stripped away bible supremacy, which seems to fog the thinking of some of DUP politicians, I would actually start to think about supporting that party. That is much more than I can say for the UUP.

It has been suggested that I find admitting that I am unionist embarrassing. Not so. Unionism is a functionless ideology at local and regional level. Can anybody think of a policy at regional level which is based upon genuine Unionism? Outside culture and religious prejudice, there is not one.

My main ideology has and always has been Conservativism. Having a political party which is agnostic on the Union has the advantage of being able to pursue politics with Nationalists who otherwise have similar political values. For example, 37% of Catholics support academic selection and the retention of Grammar Schools. Who represents them? Parity of Esteem, as Chekov describes the concept, is easy to offer when Unionism is redundant. In time, the Nationalists will come to realise that Nationalism, in election politics, is also redundant.

Just wanted in this piece to draw attention to way in which the term liberal unionist has become abused, and that many found it hard to associate with the liberal unionism espoused by more recent proponents. There is an urgent requirement for the UUP, or any other unionist party, to do politics well and find a narrative which liberal unionists are able to share. There is no perfect political Party. Most people vote for a proposition with which they feel comfortable: something no unionist Party is fully offering currently, which is one explanation why voters are so reluctant to turn out at elections.

You refer to Robert McCartney as a liberal unionist and he represents a tradition I identify with (to a large extent). When I describe myself as a liberal unionist, it doesn’t imply any equivocation on the constitutional issue. I’m an extremely staunch unionist in that respect and I want to see a coherent programme to normalise our position within the UK, in every respect and gain greater acceptance for it every community here. I accept devolution as a reality, but my instinct is integrationist. I don’t accept that Northern Ireland’s political place in the UK has to be compromised in order to appease nationalism. I’m confident in the inclusiveness of the UK and confident in my political allegiance.

I would argue that that take on unionism is purer than a quasi-ethno-nationalism which equates Britishness in Northern Ireland with Ulster Protestantism. And in that sense I’m understood to be a liberal and even self-identify as such.

There’s another brand of liberal unionism (and Paula has demonstrated this by joining Alliance) which believes in some form of ‘parity of esteem’ between nationalism and unionism. It doesn’t accept that nationalists can be equal or integrated within Northern Ireland, without some recognition of their political objectives. Therefore compromises must be made on our constitutional status. And that’s the tradition of ‘liberal unionism’ which you point to with Trevor Ringland or Seymour Major’s website.

In recent times there’s been an alliance between these two forms of ‘liberal unionism’, within the UUP. But it’s worth pointing out that they’re based on very different outlooks.