FORMER Ulster Unionist MLA David McNarry has launched a blistering attack on the party leadership, blasting it as a “self-serving and smug cabal”.
The Strangford MLA spoke out publicly for the first time last night about having been expelled and said he felt it had been “personal”.
He had been sitting as an independent unionist at Stormont since January but remained a member of the UUP.
However, last Tuesday the UUP released a statement announcing that Mr McNarry had been expelled from the party. Mr McNarry told the News Letter last night that he had just received the letter yesterday as he had been on holiday last week.
“The decision and the manner in which the UUP expelled me was personal,” he said.
“It is, in fact, more reminiscent of a purge than a process. The disciplinary juggernaut unleashed against me betrays the attitude the leadership has towards anyone whose face does not fit the cosy, self-serving and smug cabal which the UUP leadership has now become.”
He said to remove him from the party membership while already serving a suspension is “a warning to all who do not rigidly conform”.
Mr McNarry also claimed that many “traditionally minded Ulster Unionists” are now considering their future in the party as a result of his expulsion.
“Of course I am angry but I will retain my composure, my honour and my integrity in face of all this blatant unfairness.
“Neither will I have any satisfaction whatsoever in watching a once great party sink to the lowest point ever in its history,” he said, adding that he will not be appealing his expulsion.
The political veteran was once the right hand man of former UUP leader and First Minister David Trimble and served as one of his special advisors.
He first joined the Ulster Unionist Party when he was 15 and even met his wife through the party’s youth branch, the Young Unionists.
The former businessman was first elected to the Assembly in 2003.
In a statement released to the media last Tuesday, the UUP said: “We followed due process and arrived democratically at our decision (to expel Mr McNarry from the party).”
Mr McNarry resigned the UUP Stormont whip in January after then party leader Tom Elliott demoted him from the deputy chair of the education committee. However, he remained a member of the party.
Mr McNarry’s fall-out with Mr Elliott came following comments Mr McNarry made to the media about unity talks between the UUP and DUP.
He further angered the party leadership when he claimed in the News Letter that five other UUP MLAs could quit the party’s Assembly team.