Voters will decide fate of UUP leader

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UUP leader Doug Beattie

January 26 2022 11:00 AM

It wouldn’t have been a surprise to hear if, as UUP leader Doug Beattie walked in to address the crisis over his historic tweeting, the strains of Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand By Your Man’ greeted his arrival.

Since his arrival in the position, the party has been driven towards a more inclusive society, more younger women pushed on in the party ranks, embracing LGBTQ issues while other unionist parties still stand back.

Tammy famously drawled: “But if you love him, you’ll forgive him; Even though he’s hard to understand; And if you love him, oh, be proud of him; ‘Cause after all, he’s just a man”.

Then again, you can’t no longer be sure that song remains politically correct.

It’s become a dangerous world, when even words written a decade ago can be trawled up as offensive. But that’s the world we live in, whether everyone likes it or not.

Terms like misogynistic and racist are bandied about with so much more regularity these days, but where the lines are, that’s never always entirely clear.

Mr Beattie has stepped across that line, as he has freely admitted himself. And the tweet that ignited the controversy surrounding him was posted just three days ago, not some time in the distant past, which means he has more difficulty in brushing it aside. However, there are those who believe that he should be afforded the opportunity to make amends by actions rather than mere words.

No-one is saying that what was contained in the historic tweets by the UUP leader which have been trawled up are not offensive in today’s world, but just how far do we go back before we can say, well, that was a different era, times have changed, and so too have the people who wrote that?

It’s a debate that has no tangible answer.

Perhaps this latest political storm, which has so riled all those outside the Ulster Unionist Party, can be used as a means to once and for all take a look at where we used to be as a society, and how far we have come.

That there has been such outrage over the tweets that emerged during the last 48 hours shows that society is becoming so much more intolerant of anything seen as abusive.

But what is needed is for actions to speak louder than words typed many years ago.

What the whole sorry episode does show is that words matter. They can hurt.

They used to say think before you speak. Now it’s think before you tweet.

Damage has, of course, been done. Just how much damage will be up to the voting public to decide come May.

Voters will decide fate of UUP leader

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