Ulster Unionist election 'wipe-out' dismissed

The Ulster Unionist vote will hold its own in next week’s general and local elections in Northern Ireland, one of the party’s candidate’s said tonight.

David Burnside, who is involved in a bruising battle to hold onto his South Antrim seat against the DUP’s the Reverend William McCrea, said the party would not be wiped out at the polls.

He also said the DUP and his party should work together after the elections on a common negotiating strategy for future talks with the British government.

“The Ulster Unionist Party, in my view, is not going to be wiped out,” Mr Burnside said

“We will have a substantial voice just like the DUP and we need to take note of the desire among unionist voters for an end to unionist disunity.

“The DUP and UUP are going to have to get a negotiating strategy together because we know the British and Irish governments still want Sinn Féin/IRA in the Stormont Executive.

“The (nationalist) SDLP is also showing no willingness to break from Sinn Féin/IRA and so there will be no devolution.

“That means the two unionist parties need to get together and work on common strategy and I will guarantee you, if that were to happen, you will see 15% more unionists turning out at the polls.”

Mr Burnside said he believed if there was a high turnout next week, the UUP’s vote would prove more robust than some pundits had predicted.

Earlier, the rival DUP got another boost when the leader of the anti-Good Friday Agreement UK Unionists, Robert McCartney urged his supporters across the North to back them.

The former MP, who stood aside in North Down to allow DUP Assembly member Peter Weir a free run at the anti-Agreement vote against the incumbent Lady Sylvia Hermon of the UUP, said he believed the Reverend Ian Paisley’s party spoke for mainstream unionism.

“The DUP has made a public political commitment that an enforced or mandatory coalition with Sinn Féin is out of the question,” Mr McCartney, an Assembly member, said.

“That is the DUP’s manifesto pledge. Nor will they enter into a voluntary coalition unless Sinn Féin make a total and final break with the IRA, carry out to completion a public and transparent process of decommissioning and bring to a complete and final end all forms of criminality.

“Neither the DUP nor the UKUP believe that Sinn Féin can meet these requirements in the forseeable future, if ever.”

His comments were echoed by Mr Paisley while campaigning in his battle bus in the seaside town of Bangor, north Down.

In response to Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams’s confirmation last night that the IRA has embarked on an internal debate on whether to fully embrace politics, the North Antrim candidate said he did not believe republicans were capable of undergoing the transformation.

“A leopard doesn’t change its spots,” he said. “The democracy train is leaving the station without Sinn Féin.”