I've heard a little rumour (it's nothing more than that as far as I know) that if Labour does not field a candidate against David Davis in Haltemprice and Howden that the DUP may stand.
Andrew Hunter (he's the one who it's been rumoured may stand) was sitting MP for Basingstoke and changed allegiance from Conservative to DUP in 2004 (he'd been independent for a while).
Whatever someone is elected as (Con, LAC, DUP, Loony, whatever) they shouldn't be ABLE to change allegiance and still hold on in the job - bloody ridiculous!
Switching political parties happens a lot in NI; after the 2003 Assembly election, three Ulster Unionist members (including Daniel O'Donnell lookalike Jeffrey Donaldson MP) who were peed off at what they saw as their party selling out by entering into a power-sharing body with Sinn Féin joined up with the DUP. In the case of Donaldson, I am uncertain of whether his switch of party was reflected immediately at Westminster - the 2005 in his constituency, Lagan Valley, is generally recorded as a DUP gain from the Ulster Unionists.
Granted at the time, devolution had been suspensed and all members of the Northern Ireland Assembly were paid for doing nothing. (Then again, some people say that hasn't changed since devolution was restored.)
Just off the phone to my parents, and my mum has said locally Unionists who have voted for DUP have stated they will not vote for them again in light of recent moves by the party - is there any degree of truth to this?
I would say that the behaviour of some party members in the past year or so is certainly not to the liking of many moderate voters. Let's not forget the expense claims for rent of one MLA for a "constituency office" which turned out to be a portakabin parked on land that was in his wife's name.
A number of other MLA/MPs pay rent to their wives for office accommodation, or use the office expenses to pay a mortgage on a property that they use as an office.
However there would appear to be no active opposition within unionism at the moment, indeed Peter Robinson has signalled that he would like the DUP and UUP to work more closely in election campaigns. This can be translated as saying that there should only be one unionist candidate in any constituency where there is a chance that two standing would split the vote sufficiently to allow a nationalist to win.
The problem there is that moderate unionist voters, whose natural party of choice would be the Ulster Unionists, would quite possibly not vote at all for the DUP. They may instead choose to vote for an Alliance candidate or an independent.
The leadership of the UUP by Sir Reg Empey and of Alliance by David Ford cannot be described as inspiring.
Watch to see how Basil McCrea of the UUP, and Naomi Long from Alliance get on. I reckon they're future party leaders.
I'm not at all sure how interested the rest of you are in the mucky state of Northern Ireland politics. The BBC isn't helping to explain it all apparently... though I do wonder if it's because no one cares!
Still, we're in an infinately better state than we used to, and I'm hopeful that the future may bring more talented individuals into Stormont than are there presently. Most of them would be out of their depth in a council debate, never mind a national assembly.
