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
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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]