The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) is again searching for a new leader, after Doug Beattie shocked journalists and activists on Monday by tendering his resignation. The former Army Captain, who was awarded the Military Cross for bravery in Afghanistan, cited ‘irreconcilable differences’ with party officers and an ‘inability to shape the party going forwards’.

Ironically, this crisis may have been precipitated by the UUP’s relative recent success.

In July’s general election, the party’s candidate in South Antrim, Robin Swann, won the Westminster seat back from the rival Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). That victory meant that he had to step down as a Stormont Assembly member for the neighbouring constituency in North Antrim.

Under Northern Ireland’s power-sharing rules, after an MLA resigns, parties are entitled to ‘co-opt’ a replacement and avoid a by-election. In this case, the local UUP branch chose a Ballymena councillor, Colin Crawford, to succeed Mr Swann, rather than Mr Beattie’s preferred candidate.

That decision sparked an internal row that eventually led to Beattie’s resignation. And it means the Ulster Unionists are now seeking nominations for candidates to become their seventh leader in just fourteen years.

To make that task harder, almost half of the UUP’s ten strong Assembly team, as well as its one MP, have already had a go at the top job. It’s no wonder the post is regarded as one of the most difficult in Ulster politics. But it wasn’t always seen as a poisoned chalice.

After Northern Ireland’s formation in 1921, the UUP dominated politics without serious challenge for decades. It wasn’t until 2003, and the aftermath of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, that it was overtaken at the ballot box by Ian Paisley’s DUP.

That change in fortunes became a source of abiding bitterness between unionists. The DUP had attacked the UUP viciously for deciding to share power with nationalists. Yet, once it took an electoral lead, Paisley’s party performed a volte-face and entered government alongside Sinn Fein.

After those events, many Ulster Unionists understandably believed that voters would soon see through the DUP’s hypocrisy and return to their traditional home with the UUP. Arguably, that expectation eventually fed a sense of complacency, which prevented the Ulster Unionists from carving out a new role in Northern Ireland politics.

As the DUP liberalised, attracting high-profile former Ulster Unionist politicians, the UUP struggled to explain how it differed from its rival. The party, critics pointed out, couldn’t quite articulate what it was for.

Perhaps the modern Ulster Unionists came closest to answering that question just before the 2010 general election, when they formed an electoral pact with David Cameron’s Conservatives. Under the clumsy title, Ulster Conservatives and Unionists – New Force (UCUNF), the parties fielded joint candidates, giving voters a chance to elect their national government directly and put Northern Ireland back at the heart of UK politics.

Despite coming close in several seats, that innovation ultimately failed to return any MPs. The relationship with the Tories cooled and the Ulster Unionists were again in search of a defining idea.

For Beattie, and most of his immediate predecessors, the solution was that the UUP should become a ‘liberal’, ‘progressive’ alternative to the DUP. Unionist voters, they believed, were drifting to the constitutionally ‘agnostic’ Alliance Party, thanks to changing attitudes on social issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.

Unfortunately, once those questions were largely settled, it was no longer clear what these buzzwords meant in practical terms.

Many of the UUP’s long-standing members, and its supporters, remained socially conservative. The idea of a ‘woke’ unionist party was never convincing, and voters who were genuinely motivated by trendy theories on gender, race and sexuality found a more convincing advocate in Alliance.

By the same token, when Ulster Unionists tried to seem ‘inclusive’ on constitutional matters, they ended up appearing confused on key aspects of the Union. For example, the party’s health minister, Mike Nesbitt (a previous leader), recently sponsored an event demanding that Irish passport holders in Northern Ireland be granted a vote in European parliamentary elections.

A cause more calculated to undercut British sovereignty in the province would have been difficult to pick.

To be fair, the UUP opposed the Northern Ireland Protocol consistently, providing a robust critique of its failings through spokesmen like Lord Empey (yet another former leader). But Doug Beattie and his allies often suggested that other issues were more important than an Irish Sea border. They even argued, alongside nationalists and pro-EU liberals, that the new trade arrangements, and by implication a looser relationship with the rest of the UK, might create opportunities for businesses.

When the party’s outgoing leader spoke about the Union, he frequently lapsed into lectures about identity, rather than concentrating on the practical economic, political and legal arrangements that bound the UK together.

At the same time, it is undeniable that Beattie is a sincere, personable figure who will be tricky to replace. Under his stewardship, the UUP did not threaten to recreate its former successes, but it maintained the support of a significant part of the unionist electorate.

The Ulster Unionists appealed to people who would always be reluctant to vote for the DUP. And if the two parties merged, as some pundits have advocated, many of those voters would probably be lost to unionism.

The UUP’s opponents, and commentators who want to portray unionist politics as in inexorable decline, have already described Beattie as irreplaceable and predicted the Ulster Unionists will die. Even Ulster Unionist insiders are worried that a credible candidate will not emerge, with one source telling the Belfast News Letter, that it was not inconceivable that, ‘a Twitter personality could run for leader and become leader’, if no one else was willing to go on the ballot.

It is true that the party is running out of potential figureheads with a clear vision for the future, but the latest election results confirmed that it was far from finished. And the DUP’s underwhelming performance showed an appetite for alternative unionist options.

The focus in previous UUP leadership contests was always on whether the party should move in a liberal direction or revert to a more traditional outlook. Perhaps the problem was that Ulster Unionist members, on those occasions, were asking the wrong questions.

The goal of a unionist party should always be to draw Northern Ireland closer to the rest of the United Kingdom and ensure that it plays as full a role as possible in the life of the nation. If a new UUP leader applied that principle, he or she could avoid falling into confusion on constitutional questions but remain free to revamp the Ulster Unionists’ image for a modern electorate.

It’s perfectly possible for a pro-Union party in Northern Ireland to reflect the values of a changing society without weakening its stance on the Union.

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