One thought on “Lessons of the Schiavo case

  1. 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.

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