We’ll take no lectures from Jon Burrows on the past |
THERE’S a new sheriff in town. Jon Burrows is on a mission.
He oozes confidence, a man alien to the notion of self-doubt. He’s going to “flex every sinew” in his body to move Northern Ireland forward.
He has worked on his image ahead of the political drive. Have you heard he volunteered in a food bank?
Jon couldn’t field a five-a-side team full of Ulster Unionist MLAs willing to publicly endorse him, but that inconvenient fact won’t deter him in the slightest.
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For Jon, unionism is “a dynamic brand” that “believes in looking outwards”.
Anyone with experience of living in the north will struggle to identify the outward-looking unionism of which he speaks, but that’s clearly beside the point.
Burrows represents the UUP’s latest final roll of the dice. Six different men of varying shades of grey have led it since 2010, with none achieving the elusive feat of making the party that once ran the state and was synonymous with unionism relevant once again.
Whilst the party was successful in securing a Westminster seat in the 2024 general election, it remains a bit player in the eyes of most unionists.
Even the Jeffrey Donaldson tsunami that hit the DUP was not enough to shift unionists in the direction of the fringe Ulster Unionists.
It has long been argued that its best hope was to pitch its tent very slightly to the right of the Alliance Party, in an effort to entice support from soft pro-union voters alienated by the collective conduct of unionist representatives over many decades.
Burrows’ ascent to the top........