Empey says UUP needs reform crusade to boost appeal

Ulster Unionist Party leader Reg Empey has told his party's AGM today that it has to embark on a reform crusade to improve discipline and its electoral appeal.

Mr Empey told the meeting that the party's poor performance in recent elections was its own fault.

He said times had changed and the UUP must change with them to remain relevant.

It would be easy, he said, to accuse the DUP of benefiting from past risk-taking by the UUP, but it had not been the DUP that had created internal divisions, it had been the Ulster Unionists themselves.

Mr Empey also said the DUP-Sinn Féin axis of mutual loathing was not in the interests of the people of the North and the UUP must be there to offer an alternative.