Unlike the currently more dominant, (DUP), which was only formed in 1971, the origins of the (UUP) can be traced as far back as the days of William Gladstone’s Home Rule Bills.
The Irish emerged as the result of a merger between the Conservative and Liberal Unionists. Indeed, the remained formally linked to the Tories until the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. The historical bond between the two parties was rekindled in 2010, with joint candidates campaigning in under the banner of Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force.
Long regarded as the moderate section of , played an important role in the negotiations that lead to the creation of the Good Friday Agreement in the late 1990s.
However after the establishment of the Good Friday Agreement, the UUP started to suffer a series of electoral setbacks in the early part of the Twentieth Century. The saw its number of MPs reduce from 10 in 1997 to 6 in 2001.
The was further hit when three of its MPs resigned the whip at Westminster and joined the DUP. These included the now DUP , .
In 2005, the UUP lost a further five seats including that of the then , . It now had just 1 MP.
Where the UUP had been the largest in throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, in the 2007 elections to the Assembly the won just 18 out of the 108 seats available at Stormont.
Accordingly the was excluded from a role in choosing ‘s First Minister because the St Andrews Agreement had handed the appointment to the of the largest , dashing the ‘s kingmaking hopes. That, Trimble’s successor Reg Empey claimed, was “foolish and sectarian”.
The 2010 General Election then saw the lose its only remaining MP at Westminster, after Lady Sylvia Hermon, the ‘s only remaining MP, made her opposition to the Tory tie-up clear. She dodged UUP meetings repeatedly but retained the support of her local association in North Down. She subsequently departed the , but held her seat as an independent.
During the last decade, the has subsequently failed to return to its former levels of popularity, being totally outshone by the . In the 2019 General Election, the UUP garnered just 11.7% of the vote, once again failing to win any Parliamentary seats.
In the 2022 Stormont elections, the UUP won 9 of the 90 seats available at Stormont, down 1 from the 10 that the party had held prior to the elections.
The UUP is led by Doug Beattie, who is the MLA in the Northern Irish Assembly for Upper Bann. is a former soldier having served in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is still a Captain in the Army Reserves and previously wrote the book, ‘An Ordinary Soldier’. As part of his army role, he once guarded Adolf Hitler’s former deputy Rudolph Hess in Spandau Prison.
Continuing the military theme, took over the UUP leadership from , himself a former nuclear submarine commander, in May 2021.
