UUP manifesto analysis

Overview

Ulster Unionist Party (UUP - Founded 1905) is a moderate unionist party often associated with centre right politics. While being the original unionist party, they are often seen as DUP lite in modern times and have lacked a unique identity in the modern era of Northern Irish politics. With that in mind, we were surprised to see that the UUP’s 2019 manifesto scored a -20% on our left/right scale, meaning that they came out as centre left in their views. They scored as highly left on education and healthcare while only generally scoring low on most other topics. This would suggest that, realistically, the UUP are more of a centrist party who have a left leaning bias on two issues, rather than the UUP being completely committed to a centre left agenda. This centrist position in their manifesto may explain why the UUP has lost some of support with a lack of clear vision in their ideological views in face of a DUP who have a strongly held set of beliefs.

It should be noted that their manifesto did not contain some stances which they notoriously hold. These being, their stances on abortion and gay marriage. However, we looked at previous statement and manifestos to find their position on these issues as we viewed them as a necessary component to their stance on social issues.

Link to manifesto: https://uup.org/assets/images/uup%20ge%20manifesto%20twentynineteen.pdf

Indepth analysis article coming soon