Trimble vows to rebuild DUP after defections

David Trimble vowed today to rebuild his Ulster Unionist Party following damaging defections to Ian Paisley’s DUP.

The under-pressure UUP chief vented his anger at former colleagues who he accused of plotting resignations which have left the embattled party trailing behind their hardline rivals.

As he accepted the Ulster Unionists were now effectively in opposition going into next week’s review of the Good Friday Agreement, Mr Trimble insisted the walk-outs would allow him to carry out internal reforms.

He said: “There is still a little bit of dust to settle, but that dust will settle over the course of the next month or so.

“Then we have a huge opportunity for the party to put the divisions of the past behind and to put the problems of mixed message behind and for it to present itself clearly to the public and to look at its own structures and its own organisation.”

The Upper Bann MP went on the offensive in a bid to end the turmoil which has engulfed the Ulster Unionists ever since the DUP eclipsed them at last November’s elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Mr Paisley’s triumph at the Stormont polls was compounded by the decision of UUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson’s decision to switch allegiances and take two Assembly members with him into the Democratic Unionists.

The defections brought the DUP’s strength at the suspended Stormont parliament to 33, nine more than Mr Trimble’s party.

The apparent crisis within the UUP intensified when a party branch in Co Down dissolved last week after 26 members resigned.

The Ulster Unionists’ youth wing has also been shut down.

Mr Paisley will now go into the review of the 1998 peace accord leading the largest Northern Ireland party at Westminster as well as the biggest grouping in Stormont.

With negotiations expected to drag on until Easter at least, as London and Dublin attempt to break the political deadlock and restore power sharing in Belfast, the DUP leader is expected to press for huge reforms of the Agreement.

Mr Trimble claimed the review, which will examine how the peace deal operates, would not tackle the main problem of Sinn Féin’s failure to secure complete IRA disarmament.

Unionists blame republicans alleged failure to honour their side of the deal for the collapse of the power-sharing administration at Stormont nearly 18 months ago.

But he also hit out at those, including Mr Donaldson, who have left his party for not making their intentions known before the elections.

“There’s intense anger within the party at what’s happened,” he told BBC Radio Ulster’s Inside Politics.

“It’s fairly clear to me that the defectors were acting in response to a concerted plan, a plan which had probably been hatched before the election.”