The leaders of the DUP and the UUP are “undermining the pro-Union cause”, by creating a “pan-loyalist front” with organisations with links to paramilitaries, according to NI Conservatives’ spokesman, Mark Brotherston.
“Politics requires all sorts of talks and all sorts of discussions with all sorts of people”, Mark said. “But the fact that Peter Robinson and Mike Nesbitt are happy to call a press conference alongside an unabashed former terrorist, like Billy Hutchison, says it all about their commitment to mainstream British values. The DUP and the UUP are in bed with organisations that have open links to paramilitary organisations, as they cobble together their so–called ‘graduated’ response and make claims to speak for a ‘PUL’ community.”
“From parties whose loyalty is supposedly to the UK, this is a serious and worrying development. The vast majority of pro-Union people from right across our Kingdom would agree that it is profoundly un-British for a political leader to be in cahoots with paramilitary organisations. It is also appalling to see supposedly pro-Union leaders implying that it is necessary to be Protestant or Loyalist in order to be unionist”.
“The DUP and the UUP may claim to be pro-Union parties, but they clearly have a very different view of Britishness from the NI Conservatives, or indeed from the vast majority of people in the UK.”