Why Tories and Ulster Unionists make strange bedfellows

In seeking to reinstate the Conservatives' historic link with the UUP, David Cameron might be wooing the wrong unionist party If the reports this week are correct then the Conservative party is about to get back into bed with the Ulster Unionists. Which, from the Tories' viewpoint, would be as wise a move as Richard Burton made when he re-married Elizabeth Taylor back in the mid-seventies. The UUP and the Tories first fell out of love back in the 1980s after Margaret Thatcher's government signed the Anglo-Irish agreement that gave Dublin a greater say and scrutiny over Northern Ireland affairs. Relations were really never the same between what was once a powerful political alliance known as the Conservative and Unionist party. The strains on the marriage became even more severe when one half of the union - the Tories -... [read full story]