Quit while the going is good, Paisley tells Trimble

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble should quit while the going is good, his main rival the Rev Ian Paisley claimed today.

After Mr Trimble’s declaration yesterday that he did not intend to resign his post, Mr Paisley said if the Upper Bann MP had any sense, he would step down following recent defections from his party.

The North Antrim MP said: “We are not saying that Mr Trimble should not, any longer, be the leader of the Ulster Unionist party – that is their business.

“Their president (the Rev Martin Smyth) says it. The frontline men that were praising him so much in the months that have past are saying it.

“There is not one voice to defend him. There is not one voice out in the open fighting for him.

“There has been complete silence from his best praisers in the past.

“If Mr Trimble has any sense, looking at the demise of many Official Unionist leaders, he should get out while the going is good.”

Last week, three members of Mr Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Assembly team announced they were quitting the party.

Rebel MP Jeffrey Donaldson, Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Arlene Foster and Lagan Valley MLA Norah Beare said they no longer had confidence in the party and believed that it no longer represented their values.

Mr Donaldson had been engaged in a bitter five-year battle against Mr Trimble and his supporters from within the Ulster Unionists.

The Lagan Valley MP revealed he had been invited to join Mr Paisley’s negotiating team in the New Year review of the Good Friday Agreement and would make a final decision on whether he would join the DUP after the Christmas holiday.

After a meeting of party officers yesterday to discuss the resignation, Mr Trimble said he was planning to submit his name for re-election as leader in March at the annual general meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council.

He declared: “Just to make sure there is no doubt about the matter, I made it absolutely clear that I have been elected by the Ulster Unionist Council as leader.

“I don’t intend to desert my post.

“The Council can, of course, decide to retire me. That is entirely their privilege but I have every intention of continuing.”

DUP policing board member Ian Paisley Junior described Mr Trimble as unionism’s weakest link.

Mr Paisley and his son were commenting after a meeting with Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Hugh Orde.

The DUP leader said they had discussed the police investigation into concerns about a police front. They had also focused on the security situation.

Mr Paisley Junior said while there was pressure for concessions on the scaling down on security, the recent election result in November emphasised the need for those concessions to stop.

Mr Paisley Junior, whose party emerged as the largest in the Northern Ireland Assembly at the election, said: “I think it is fair to say that the election on November 26 stopped the concessions to the Provisional IRA.

“From our point of view, it is important that that full stop to the concessions is maintained and the British government does not make it a pause or a comma and then proceed with concessions later on.

“The concessions that they made were miserable and worthless but the reason why the electorate voted as they did, in an anti-Agreement fashion, is because of those miserable concessions.

“The only way forward now is for political progress to be made and the British government to listen to the voice of the people.”