A sample living will. Actually this one is fatally flawed, as he does not specify whether he means Adlai Stevenson, the 1950s presidential candidate, or his grandfather Adlai Stevenson, who was Vice-President from 1893-1897.
A sample living will. Actually this one is fatally flawed, as he does not specify whether he means Adlai Stevenson, the 1950s presidential candidate, or his grandfather Adlai Stevenson, who was Vice-President from 1893-1897.
Who are all these Catholics who are supposed to be just waiting to be given the all-clear to vote for the UUP? Do they actually exist? Because I’m not sure I’ve ever met any of them.
Sir John Gorman certainly wasn’t a part of the NI Catholic ‘ethnos’ (that’s not a good or a bad thing, it’s just a thing thing), Patricia Campbell was fairly atypical and before that I believe we have to back to Louis Boyle (an arch-careerist at a time when joining the Unionist Party might actually help your career) to find a Catholic who has actually sought an elected role in Unionist politics.
The UUP can do whatever it wants to improve its attractiveness to Catholics; it still will get no more than a few hundred Catholic votes barring the odd situation where there’s a tactical squeeze (e.g. Upper Bann 2001 and 2005). The big four Northern Ireland political parties are primarily about defending their ethnos, rather than campaigning for or against a given constitutional position. Before anyone jumps down my throat, does what the Unionist parties spend their time doing attract or repel Catholics and small n nationalists from the union? Ditto with the Nationalist parties, Ulster Prods and a united Ireland? I rest my case.
It would be better off thinking through how it can get some of its old voters back, although personally I think it is living on borrowed time and is heading for the dustbin of history anyway.