Hi °C | Lo °C Bob Wilson's letter (Write Back, December 15) suggests that submerging the UUP within the Conservative Party and drowning any unlikely elected UCUNF politicians in a sea of Conservative MPs is progress.
This is crazy. If the Union is to be strengthened, it will be due to work already done here on the ground and the stickability of the DUP.
Attempting to make Stormont work is dismissed as parochialism. This is akin to the fool's eyes focused in the ends of the earth. At least Peter Robinson's DUP remains in there seeking to resolve difficult problems.
In contrast, UCUNF has become Reg's get-out-card. It is an exit strategy that he hopes will free UCUNF from the responsibility to make politics work here.
The idea that a few UCUNF Catholics will make a non-sectarian summer is ludicrous. UCUNF has actually given up on reconciliation.
The strongest argument for the Union would be a Northern Ireland at peace with itself.
The Tories have little to offer in furtherance of this aim.
The UCUNF legacy would, at the very best, be one Tory candidate elected, one UUP seat lost, the demise of the UUP, the weakening of the DUP and the strengthening of Neanderthals on either side.
That scenario would threaten not strengthen the Union. David Cameron would then wash his hands of UCUNF and Northern Ireland along with it. His strategic interest in this place would prove for all to see a very temporary matter.
Cameron's aim was to secure the election of a few Tory MPs to prove that his was a party of the Union.
If he fails in this, which seems highly likely, Reg and the UCUNF will be abandoned without further ado.
ROY GARLAND
Belfast
