Assembly Tories 'will designate as Unionists'

Conservative Party members in the North will designate themselves as unionists if elected to the Assembly, David Cameron revealed today.

He arrived in the seaside town of Bangor to boost the North's Tories' bid for their first Assembly seat. Mr Cameron said that while the party was very much in favour of the United Kingdom, it wanted to break away from the tired divided politics of the province.

Mr Cameron was responding to a challenge from Ulster unionist leader Reg Empey to state if Conservatives would designate themselves at Stormont as unionist or non-aligned.

“The Conservative Party is the strongest supporter of the United Kingdom and in all parts of the United Kingdom remaining within the United Kingdom,” he said.

“I think that obviously the Ulster Unionists are rattled and rather desperate from what they were saying today and I think that speaks volumes.

“Of course it is up to the candidate to decide what to do. Having spoken to our candidates I am very sure if they have to designate they will designate themselves as unionist.

“Of course they will. But you know, we ought to be getting away from this whole idea that you have to designate, that you have to be so sectarian in approach.

“One of the reasons we are standing is to say to people in Northern Ireland politics doesn’t have to be like this. It should be about the quality of your school, the quality of your hospitals, the choice you get in public services, supporting the rule of law, backing the free enterprise system.

“That is what politics ought to be about instead of designating what sort of politician you are going to be when you’re walking through Parliament’s doors.”

The Conservative leader visited a doctor’s surgery in Bangor along with his Northern Ireland spokesperson David Livington and the party’s Assembly candidate in North Down, James Leslie.

Mr Leslie is a former Ulster Unionist junior minister in the last Stormont power sharing government who defected to the Tories last year.

Earlier Reg Empey said it would be nonsense for the Tories as a party of the union to designate themselves at Stormont as a non-aligned party as their 2003 Assembly Election manifesto suggested.

The Ulster Unionist leader also strongly rejected claims that designating as unionist was a sectarian move, arguing instead that unionism embraced all religions and ethnic groups.