I very much welcome the announcement from Basil McCrea and John McCallister that they are to establish a new pro-Union and progressive political party.
Choice is good. And it’s good that the voters of Northern Ireland are to be offered something other than the tribal politics of the past.
I suspect that Basil and John’s new party will try to appeal to voters (and people who don’t currently vote) from across the electorate. For this reason I’d hope that the new name of the Party will not include the “Unionist” word. Unionism has become a euphemism for Protestant.
It’s for this reason that the Party should distance itself from the current Unionist-Nationalist nonsense. Pro-Union, sure. But let’s move on from the dialog of the past.
