Innl Doug Beattie Tory 2023

News Letter

The Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie tells the News Letter editor Ben Lowry why he is at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester.  Monday October 1 2023

Transcript

00:00 BD you're here at the Tory party conference, DUP are not here, what do you make of that?

00:05 Well I don't make anything of it, the bottom line is I'm the leader of the Ulster Unionist

00:10 Party, a unionist party for Northern Ireland. It's important that we engage with government

00:14 and here we are at a conference where the UK government has all come together, there's

00:18 people here from the ministers for health, for education, for defence and of course the

00:25 Secretary of State and as well as other internationals including the EU ambassador to London. So

00:32 it's important that I can be here to engage with these people. If unionism isn't here

00:36 making our case heard then where else would you be? There's no point standing on the peripheries

00:44 shouting and making noises, you need to get into the arena and that's why I'm here and

00:48 I'm talking to people and I'll be meeting the Secretary of State later on today to press

00:53 the issues that I have. Is your main message the unionist message or is it the unionist

00:58 need to go back to Stormont message? Well I think there's a number of messages, first

01:02 of all is a Northern Ireland message. Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom, it's

01:07 an integral part of the United Kingdom so my position is to how do we safeguard that

01:12 position within the United Kingdom. I believe that is through a functioning devolved government

01:17 and I've been pressing for that. That's my position. I accept other people have a different

01:23 position in regards to that and all positions I suppose we have to listen to but nobody's

01:29 coming up with a plan B in regards to Northern Ireland. To allow it to decay in the manner

01:35 it is now is just not good enough. What about the Jamie Bryson critique? Ok he's one voice

01:42 but there might be others in the DEP who think this. He described it crudely as the LSE party

01:46 crossing the picket line. Yeah of course and Jamie Bryson will be Jamie Bryson but I don't

01:51 think he's the pure sum of the strategic loyalist thinking out there. People think that Jamie

01:56 Bryson is the voice of all loyalism. God help him because he has offered up absolutely nothing

02:02 in his critique. Yes he's outlined the problems, we have outlined the problems but at least

02:07 we're outlining solutions as well which he has not done. And for the last 18 months we

02:13 have had no devolved government. It has achieved absolutely the sum of zero. So I don't see

02:19 why we should continue on with that.

02:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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