It has made the UUP effectively part of the carve-up at Stormont and the same is true in local councils.

The UUP leadership also quickly fell into line with the DUP/Sinn Fein proposal to abolish the Department of Employment and Learning.

Of course, equally, DEL's fate illustrates the continued ineffectiveness of Alliance and that party's complicity in carve-up government.

Alliance has also made practically no progress in pushing the Cohesion, Sharing and Integration strategy - even though the party made progress on CSI one of its chief conditions when it initially took the Policing and Justice ministry.

By contrast, the Scottish Executive can at least point to some concrete success since it launched its anti-sectarianism strategy shortly after devolution in 1998.

More recently in Scotland, a task force has been appointed to tackle sectarianism, while in Northern Ireland, where the problems are even more serious, our Executive has been paralysed by the Stormont carve-up.

David Ford has been in office for nearly two years and a CSI strategy has not been implemented.

The newly-autonomous Northern Ireland Conservatives will relentlessly press the importance of a shared future, rather than a 'shared out' future.

It will be one of our key priorities to eliminate division and segregation.

JOHNNY ANDREWS

Way Forward Group

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