BELFAST

IT APPEARS THAT Daily Mail pin-up Colonel Tim Collins – hero of the shambolic invasion of Iraq twenty years ago – is dragging himself away from his lucrative career in private security and – to quote one critical voice – choosing to climb aboard the Titanic after it’s struck the iceberg, looking for the captain’s cabin.

The dashing officer, whose full-Henry V, pre-invasion speech was rumored to make Iraqi troops surrender immediately once they heard it read out to them, has offered himself as a candidate for the Ulster Unionist Party at the next Westminster election. To save Northern Ireland from Sinn Fein, he says. And, perhaps, the Ulster Unionist Party from political oblivion.

The Ulster Unionist Party ruled Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1972, during which period it was all powerful. Since then, it’s been pretty much all downhill for the old UUP. Today, it hold no seats at Westminster, and only 9 of the 90 seats at the currently moribund Stormont Assembly. It’s current leader, Doug Beattie, served under Colonel Collins in the British Army and was not altogether pleased with his commanding officer’s famous call to arms, which he felt left the men around him fearful and demoralized .

All of which makes commentators curious about Collins’ decision to stand for the Ulster Unionist Party.

“Ulster Unionism as a whole is in turmoil,” explained Professor Anthony Erin of the Citrus Order, a breakaway faction of the Orange Order. The Professor describes himself as a small “u” Unionist, who now votes Alliance and learns Irish on Thursdays. “Many soft unionists, like myself, are moving to the centre, open even to discussing a United Ireland should the need ever arise. We have to accept that demography has been unkind to Unionism; and Brexit – which many misguided souls in our community voted for – has given it a real kick in the balls. There’s now an economic border between us and Britain, which there didn’t have to be. Meanwhile, muscular Irish Nationalism – in the form of Sinn Fein and its growing phalanx of fellow-travelers – appears to be in the ascendant everywhere on the island of Ireland. Colonel Collins has his work cut out for him even if he wins a seat. The Ulster Unionist Party has had its core emptied in recent decades, first by the thunderous Democratic Unionist Party, and others, to the right, and more recently by the more practically-oriented Alliance Party, perched slightly to the centre-left of the UUP and eating into its urban middle-class vote. To use a metaphor the colonel would appreciate, the UUP is surrounded on all sides by the fuzzies, down to its last rounds, fixing bayonets and hoping that some relief column will turn up to save it from a fate worse than death.”

More vocal members of the Unionist family see the Collins move as almost suicidal in a political sense.

“I mean who wants to be captain of the Titanic when its fifth watertight compartment is flooding,” exclaimed Carson Craig a Democratic Unionist Party supporter from deep in Portadown. “The Ulster Unionist Party, from Terrence O’Neill onward, has done nothing but sell Northern Ireland out to the Fenian scum who now threaten our very existence. If Tim Collins and the SAS had been given free rein against the IRA and its support, we would not be in the unpleasant position we find ourselves in now. Does he really want a Fenian to be First Minister of our Province? Does he want a border between us and the mainland? Does he want the Anti-Christ’s brood down there in Dublin to have a say in ruling our beloved Ulster? He should join us. He only needs to know three words to do it: Never. Never. Never.”

Professor Erin explained that that the DUP, having thrived on criticizing UUP compromises over the years, now finds itself in the very same position, with parties to its right making life very uncomfortable for its leadership over the acceptance of an economic border in the Irish Sea or, worse still, the possibility of some kind of rule from Dublin.

“Hoist on its own petard, I think it’s called. Tim Collins would be a useful distraction, I suppose. But the problems for Unionism will not go away. If he got elected, I suspect the colonel would seek to be his party’s leader. That would, at least, dispense with the problem of taking orders from a former *Sergeant Major who then went on to criticize the legendary Iraq speech as actually demoralizing to the men listening to it.

“Nonetheless, it’s a courageous step Collins is taking, worthy of an heroic figure of his stature. One thinks of Gordon of Khartoum, Scott of the Antarctic, or even Cornwallis at Yorktown. Or, and God help us here, Townsend at Kut and Elphinstone in Afghanistan. The Titanic comparison while unkind, has some merit. And remember, it was a brother of a former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party who actually designed the Titanic.”

*Doug Beattie did eventually rise to the rank of captain but the temptation to come to attention in Tim Collins’ presence will still be strong – ED