Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3114277 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 258 pages

Synopsis
In what is their centenary year, the Ulster Unionist Party has been left reeling from the 2005 Westminster general election results. The historic party of the union has but one remaining seat in the House of Commons, and as was predicted, Northern Ireland's electorate has abandoned the centre-ground parties in favour of the extremes. The DUP and Sinn Fein now hold the key to political progress - a scenario almost inconceivable when the Belfast Agreement was signed seven long years ago. So, how did the UUP become so out of touch with mainstream Unionist opinion? What could the party have done to hold its vote in the 2005 general election? Why did the British Government abandon Trimble after he had led Ulster Unionism from international isolation to being the driving force behind the Belfast Agreement? In "Transforming Unionism", Michael Kerr offers a view of the UUP's electoral meltdown from inside Ulster Unionist Party Head Quarters, and unravels the last days of Trimble as Ulster Unionism's leader. Seen through the eyes of the campaign team, Kerr's daily journal, and interviews with the key players, this book dissects the 2005 campaign and the end of the Trimble project.

Kerr evaluates where and why the UUP leadership failed, lays out the different directions the party may now take, and offers a constructive analysis of what Ulster Unionism must do if it is to rebuild its electoral base and emerge from the wreckage of one of the most torrid episodes in the party's 100-year history.

Customer Reviews

A challenge to Unionism...but is it too late?
This is an honest, very funny, yet very serious assessment of where Unionism lies following the 2005 general election and how it got there.
Michael Kerr has thrown caution to the wind in writing such a quick and topical book, and no doubt he will get a few knocks for doing so, but whilst offering warnings to his former colleagues he sets out clearly and constructively to help them. Had he waited a year or two and refined every page it would have had no impact.
The journal entries are classic - at once they make both the 2005 election seem interesting and the UUP seem human - which is no easy task.
The important parts of the book are however at the beginning and end of the book. There is nothing to my mind in print that provides a better articulation of what moderate Unionism has been about over the last decade. The mixed style of the book makes Kerr's analysis accessible to even the slowest learners in his party and within Unionism - I imagine this is the audience he is aiming it at.
I have no doubt people will pick holes in this book and attack it for many different reasons but that is surely because it will prove very uncomfortable reading for those who have let the Unionist position slip through their own bloody mindedness and selfishness.
This book should be read and thought about.

New style of book
A mix of: an objective and detailed analysis of Unionist politics, an insider account written in the language and ideas of the participants, and a story-line style chronicle and exposé. This is a bizarre Roddy Doyle-meets-professor-in-pub combination, but it has a lot more knowledge and insight to offer than other recent popular or academic books on Unionism. One gains unusual respect for the humanity and hard work of the party workers from this book but also a sense, I think, of how stuck the larger project they have worked for really is.