ULSTER Unionist MLAs privately discussed going into opposition to the DUP less than a month ago while most of them did not know the party was engaged in talks with the DUP.
At an ‘away day’ just four weeks ago the party’s then 16 MLAs discussed whether leaving the Stormont Executive was desirable – despite the talks with the DUP having been under way for six months at that point.
An agenda for the meeting at the Dunsilly Hotel in Antrim obtained by the News Letter lists “discussion re opposition” as one of four items to be debated.
It is understood that the discussion eventually ended in a decision not to go into opposition and that David McNarry wanted to issue a statement saying that leaving the Executive had been ruled out but party leader Tom Elliott asked him not to do so.
A source close to the DUP-UUP talks suggested that indicated that Mr Elliott was perhaps not as supportive of the process as they had believed.
Mr McNarry and the sole Ulster Unionist minister, Danny Kennedy, favour the party moving closer to the DUP while other MLAs such as deputy leader John McCallister and Basil McCrea want to see it go into opposition and take on the Executive.
In a sign that the crisis is damaging morale among the party’s grassroots, the News Letter was yesterday contacted by one former UUP member who has left the party over the debacle.
The individual, who asked not to be named but whose identity we have verified, said that the party desperately needed to decide what it stands for.
And there were murmurings of discontent among both supporters and opponents of Mr McNarry over the statement issued by UUP chairman David Campbell on Thursday.
In it Mr Campbell – who was involved in these talks with the DUP and previous attempts to broker a deal between the parties – described the saga as the ‘McNarry Affair’ and said that he had referred both Mr McNarry and unspecified other individuals to the party’s disciplinary committee.
Yesterday, a senior UUP figure said that there was unhappiness among some in the party at Mr Campbell’s statement, which he described as “a stupid, stupid statement”.
He said that the statement only promised to re-ignite the story by dragging it out and bringing more people into the disciplinary process.
It has also emerged that with Mr McNarry’s resignation from the UUP Assembly group and his decision to sit as an independent at Stormont the party has also now lost money, believed to be a few thousand pounds, from Stormont which is paid to parties on a per MLA basis.