NEAR the beginning of his conference speech Mike Nesbitt said: “So, let’s do it. Let’s stand up, proudly, boldly, fearlessly, and state what we stand for, and ask every citizen of the country to join our team, and fight for what is best for Northern Ireland and for its people – all its people. We need a road map for the way ahead for the next generation.
“It’s a map that shows where we want to go, and identifies the best route to get there.”
Odd, then, that he didn’t actually tell the delegates – or the wider audience – what the UUP stands for, let alone show them the route map for where he wants to take the party.
This wasn’t a barnstorming speech and nor was it the speech of a new leader who wants to set his personal stamp on the party. It was, like almost everything he has said and done since he was elected, a curiously cautious and uninspiring speech.
Indeed, there were times when he sounded like a guest lecturer who had been invited along to make some observations about the UUP and the general state of government here. It was a performance so lacking in passion, enthusiasm and personal vision that it was hard to avoid the conclusion that he regarded himself as the ‘presenter’ of the UUP rather than the leader of the UUP.
I couldn’t understand why he went out of his way to convey the impression that the UUP wasn’t, in fact, an integral part of the government.
A number of times he said, ‘if we were in charge’; ‘if we ran that department’; ‘if we were in control’: and not once during the speech did he either mention or praise Danny Kennedy, the UUP’s sole minister. Maybe he’s trying to pretend that the UUP is in a position to wash its hands of the disaster that is the Executive.
Well, the UUP is not in that position. The UUP remains in the Executive because Mike Nesbitt made it one of the central planks of his leadership campaign.
And if the Executive is as bad and as ineffective as he claimed it was on numerous occasions during his speech, then maybe he should have apologised to the delegates for trapping the UUP inside it. It would certainly have made his pledge to produce a ‘credible alternative’ a lot more convincing!
Again, why the need to wait until other people make the first move when it comes to change?
What’s the point of demanding the structures of Official Opposition while remaining inside and constantly complaining about the DUP/SF carve-up?
What’s the point of talking about the need for Plan Bs when, stuck in the Executive, you are not in a position to either promote them, let alone implement them?
What’s the point of talking about the failure of government to address and resolve problems while you remain part of that government?
What’s he planning to go to the electorate with between 2014 and 2016?
During his leadership campaign he made a virtue of having no policy bank, no big ideas and no quick fixes.
So maybe he does deserve to be congratulated: in his first six months and in his first conference speech there are still no costed, thought-through policies, nor ideas or fixes.
Wrapping a so-called alternative strategy in a blanket of platitude, while trying to distance yourself from the strategy of the Executive of which you remain a voluntary member, is a fundamentally stupid approach to take.
Either have the courage to stand on your own two feet and set out clearly defined alternatives from the outside; or stop bellyaching and become part of the collective responsibility which membership of the Executive requires.
Professor Rick Wilford of QUB summed up the speech as “a modest, rather parochial vision. Will it inspire? I don’t think so. It started with the past and it ended with the past”.
That, I think, sums it up pretty well. At this stage the UUP does not need a lecture on how to run the economy or make government better. What they wanted to hear was a concrete strategy on how to win back former voters as well as attracting newer ones. If they had wanted a lecture on economics and the machinery of government they could have signed up for a night class at a local college.
It might have helped, too, if Nesbitt had actually devoted some time to the question of the real differences between the UUP and DUP and why voters should opt for the party he leads rather than any other party.
Again, what was he offering the people who no longer voted?
If they are, as I suspect they are, turned off by the Assembly and the Executive, then they are unlikely to be turned on by a UUP which remains in the Executive and which seems incapable of making its voice heard or getting its policies adopted. As for the next generation, all they were offered was the legacy of Carson and Craigavon!
I have written before that the UUP has no chance of surviving if it doesn’t deal with the issues of role, relevance, purpose and direction.
Those were the issues which Nesbitt should have focused on and had he done so he might have fired up the delegates (and this, by the way, was the lowest attendance for years) and given them something to take to the doorsteps.
Instead, he has given them nothing.
Most of them won’t remember what he said because most of it had nothing to do with what they needed to hear: which may explain the muted responses and long periods of silence during his speech. This was Nesbitt’s moment: 30 minutes of live coverage and a chance to wow the delegates, media and the TV audience.
He blew it and spectacularly so.
I can’t now think of a reason why anyone should vote for a UUP led by him.
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