In this bumper edition of Northern Slant Hosts, I sat down with former MLA and Deputy Leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), and founding member and Deputy Leader of the political party NI21. We discuss John’s time in politics, thoughts on the Union and the future of Unionism as we approach the centenary commemorations in Northern Ireland.

John was incredibly open about his time in NI21, and the challenges which were faced in setting up and running a new party which was fraught with problems, as well as his frustrations with how politics is done in NI. He also spoke about some of the things he suggested to make our politics a bit more normal, including introducing the mechanism to allow for an official opposition at Stormont.

You can watch our discussion here, or listen on Spotify if you’re on the go. I’ve also shared some highlights from the Q&A below.

Yours has been one of the more interesting political careers in Northern Ireland, and you seem to be a very reasonable and normal person. What on earth led you to politics? 

I suppose probably like a lot of people, I grew up through the Troubles, and had a huge interest in politics, from a young age watching election coverage and Mrs Thatcher cruising to a second term and then a third term.

A huge interest in politics and the way it was developing and evolving and always wanted to do something, and primarily – like most people, and it might sound very tried and tested – I wanted to give something back to the community.

I wanted to be part of solving problems and helping constituents. It was always surprising that the letters ‘MLA’ after your name could open many doors and get things moving and get problems looked at, that had sat in an inbox somewhere.

That was the motivation for me, pure and simple. I thought I had something to contribute, and I wanted to do that and try to help and to serve.

You formed NI21 with Basil McCrea in 2013. I watched in 2018/19 when ChangeUK, or The Independent Group, was formed; I remembered NI21 and how difficult it was to form a whole new party. You were up against everybody, including those who up until recently were on your side. Did you think it would be that hard? 

I knew it was going to be really difficult, because I was trying to do lots of things [in the new party] while trying to do my day job: still representing constituents in the Assembly, attending constituency events, and now trying to build some type of political party and movement. 

It was fun and it was exciting. I was amused [by the ChangeUK name], because one of the names I had toyed with before NI21 came up was ChangeNI, or ReformNI. We could have had a ChangeNI and ChangeUK. 

I suspect they encountered one of the same difficulties we did in NI21. Instead of using the newness to better define what it was they were about, they opened it up to too broad a base.

Basil was much more into the numbers [of members] rather than speaking to people. For example, one guy who was a member of NI21 is now a member of the Communist Party of Ireland. On what planet do you mix those two political traditions?

But it was exciting doing it. 

You mentioned NI21’s failure and unionism’s failure to claim the middle ground, and we’ve seen the gains which Alliance Party have made. What can unionism do to claw back the initiative?

We probably need to be speaking about the benefits of the union in a much more positive light. We shouldn’t talk about a united Ireland as if it’s some sort of fait accompli. We need to be talking about the benefits of the union and making the union a welcoming place for everyone. 

Unionism has an awful habit of saying “well you’re an Alliance-type anyway, so why don’t you just clear off and go to the Alliance”. If you look at the city of Belfast, if someone had told you in 2007, never mind 10 years before, that the Green Party would poll more in Belfast than the Ulster Unionist Party, you would have been absolutely shocked. The UUP is down to two council seats in Belfast. 

They need to be much better at speaking to people other than just themselves. I know it is an old cliché, but I feel that the UUP left me rather than me leaving them. They moved on to a different ground. When it came to the European election in 2019, I had no idea what the UUP wanted to do (over things like Brexit). I desperately wanted to vote for UUP, but had to – in the end – vote for Alliance.

One of the things I thought about unionist unity, was that it decreased the circle of voters who you were appealing to. If you put out a Christian, Orange man who was a victim, you’d hit the Holy Grail of candidates. Unity always involves uniting around the headbanging wing of unionism. Nobody ever says that we should unite around liberal unionism.

By the time we got to equal marriage – and to Mike Nesbitt’s credit, he did warn that we would be on the wrong side of history [opposing equal marriage] – we had equal marriage in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland, and here was Northern Ireland fighting against it. 

Stop putting off voters. Stop limiting who you think can be labelled as a unionist. Start trying to make the tent bigger and wider. Look at the Scottish referendum, and how Gordon Brown stepped in and arguably made a massive contribution, even though the Prime Minister he helped to save was the person who had beat him four years earlier. The pro-union parties came together. 

I have no doubt that there is still a huge margin in Northern Ireland who are pro-union and who are happy with the status quo. But we need to lift our political game and make the argument for the union and give them a reason to vote. 

Too often unionism has been associated with “the answer is no. Now what is your question?”

We need to be more positive. We need to actually engage with people. The union is a great message to sell. So go out and sell it.  

When you were an independent MLA, and sitting in the ‘naughty corner’ of the Assembly, it was actually quite a productive corner. Steven Agnew [Green Party] brought forward the Children’s Services Cooperation Bill. Jim Allister [TUV] brought in the Special Advisors Bill. You brought in the Opposition Bill.

Earlier in this series I spoke with Conall McDevitt; he said that back-bench MLAs have a huge amount of power to do things when they put their mind to it.  Your Opposition Bill had the potential to change hugely the way that Northern Ireland works in Government. Did the smaller parties fail the first time round, or are we just not ready for that type of more normal-ish politics yet?

I don’t think they did fail. I think that’s where our normal is. In straight normal politics, if you brought down the Government as an opposition, you’d be lauded as a great success, which they did. And there was no doubt whatsoever that the two main parties (DUP and Sinn Féin) hated being in Government alone without the fig leaf of political cover from SDLP, UUP and Alliance.

So that end of it was a huge success. If you had more time for them to build up some type of joint basis, or indeed if you change the structure and remove designation as well, or you were able to remove a party from Government, you could have well changed the way they could do business. 

What I thought was very exciting about the Opposition Bill, was starting to look at what’s broken here. Most of the time our Assembly functions very well. Not a lot of people know this. It comes back to a comment you made at the start: people getting in and talking to each other makes a huge contribution, even to building relations. It’s much harder to demonise someone you sit in Committee with, or drink a cup of tea or coffee with – someone you stand beside and ask how their granny’s new hip is.

What Conall McDevitt said is absolutely right: back-bench Assembly Members have a huge amount of power. In legislative terms, probably more than a Westminster back-bencher, particularly if you think about now where the Government has an 80-seat majority. If the dominant party in the House of Commons doesn’t want your Bill, they have the numbers to vote it down. Whereas actually when you are doing stuff in the Northern Ireland Assembly, if you can get one of the big parties on board, it is very hard to stop it.

So the Opposition stuff was interesting to do, to really start to ask “where are our blockages?” Most of those blockages are in the Executive. We need an Executive that functions like a Government, and like a collective Government, and that is something I have a concern on. We have no collective cabinet responsibility.

The problem, when I looked at it as a member, was that we had Simon Hamilton taking Michelle O’Neill (when Agriculture Minister) to court over rural development funding. You had Arlene Foster taking Mark H Durkan (when Regional Development Minister) to court. And it looked ridiculous. I remember Peter Robinson using the phrase that the Executive was dysfunctional, and nobody batted an eyelid. If Enda Kenny, David Cameron or Nicola Sturgeon said that “my Government is dysfunctional” would someone not say “well Prime Minister, you really need to go”? We just sort of accepted it. 

How do we change that? My idea was that if you and I are in Government together, I can’t protest against what you are doing on health today, and you can’t protest against what I am doing with Education tomorrow. If you are in Government, act like you’re in Government. Don’t do opposition within the Government. It creates dysfunction.

One of the things I was proud of as part of NI21 was having the confidence to say at times that “we can do this”. 

In the nine years I was an MLA, it nearly didn’t get started; then nearly collapsed over policing and justice; then UUP nearly made it collapse over policing and justice; then in my second term there were political talks right the way through – Stormont House 1, Stormont House 2, Hass/O’Sullivan talks and the New Deal, New Decade eventually. There have always been challenges, but it’s having the will to work. I come back to the basis of this, the more normal we can make Northern Ireland, the better a place it is to live; the more people who want to live, and work here, and create a good, prosperous society. The more secure you can make those who believe in the union, and the more viable you can make it for those who want a united Ireland, the better. 

As good a place to end it as any. Thank you very much for speaking to us. We really appreciate it. 

This interview is available as a podcast on Spotify.