Просмотр новости
Найдите то, что Вас интересует
Спутники
РН
SpaceX
Роскосмос
NASA
СпутникиРНSpaceXРоскосмосNASALeader Jon Burrows is under pressure to bring stability to a party that finds itself in a political crisis
As resignation letters go, this one didn’t hold back.
Mike Nesbitt, a former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), quit as health minister on Tuesday night after a dramatic fallout with the party’s leader, Jon Burrows.
In his letter, which he published on social media, he accused Burrows of undermining him and effectively rendering his position untenable, and said he had found this out second hand.
“I am not the sort of minister who is happy to discover the leader’s view of issues under my purview by having to monitor the media,” Nesbitt wrote.
The issue was the closure of emergency general surgery services at the Causeway hospital in Coleraine, Co Derry, as recommended by the hospital trust, and awaiting sign-off by Nesbitt as minister.
With Burrows being an MLA for nearby North Antrim, many of his constituents use the hospital.
Last week, he played the populist card, telling a meeting in Coleraine he did not support the recommendation to close it. “I do not agree with it, and I will never agree with it,” he said.
As political commentator Alex Kane put it: “He threw [Nesbitt] under the bus ... threw him under an ambulance actually.”
In his resignation letter, Nesbitt wrote that when Burrows became leader, “you informed me, with your hallmark clarity, that when it came to health, you had but one ‘red line’, namely puberty blockers ... you appear to have introduced a second ‘red line’.
“Yesterday, I offered you a way to manage the situation. As I have not received a timely response, and given the shock waves you have created in the HSC [Health and Social Care] system, this matter needs resolved.”
Nesbitt offered his resignation “with no little regret”, he wrote.
In a statement on Tuesday night, a UUP spokesperson thanked him “sincerely for his service and for the leadership he has given”, saying he left a “significant legacy”.
This was replaced by a further statement issued at 6.06am on Wednesday, this time in Burrows’s name, in which he also thanked Nesbitt for his service and restated the need for “meaningful reform” but also seemed to reopen the question of what this should mean and how it should be delivered.
“Reform cannot simply be done to communities ... I don’t believe we have got the balance right,” he wrote.
Nesbitt relished the role of minister for health and took it seriously; he inherited a health service buckling under the weight of everything from spiralling waiting lists to the consequences of a lack of reform, all against the background of financial difficulties and in the absence of a budget at Stormont.
As it stands, Northern Ireland is without a health minister. It is up to Burrows, as his party holds the health brief, to nominate a replacement, which he has said he will do on Thursday.
Names already in the mix include former party leader Steve Aiken and former deputy leader Robbie Butler.
Among the questions hanging over the appointment is that of the autonomy of Nesbitt’s successor. Will the next minister be allowed to make their own decisions, or must they run everything by their party leader?
Such are the political problems facing Burrows in the wake of this very public fallout. He is relatively new in the post – he took office in January, a matter of months after joining the party – and is still viewed with scepticism by many of his MLAs.
He has already lost one – another former leader, Doug Beattie, who quit the party earlier this year – and the loss of Nesbitt from health will have done nothing to reassure others.
Nesbitt turned the knife in his resignation letter: “Bringing you into Stormont is on me, as is my decision to stand down as party leader, opening the opportunity for you to mount a successful campaign to take the role.”
In a sentence dripping with sarcasm, he wrote: “Previously, I held the record for the shortest time between becoming an MLA and assuming the leadership, but you proved I was only playing at it. Congratulations!”
Burrows has his own battle to fight, in this case for his North Antrim seat, which he was co-opted into, rather than elected. Knowing that he needs to win that seat in Northern Ireland’s Assembly elections next May if he is to remain credible as leader must have been on his mind when he told the crowd in Coleraine town hall that he did not support the closure of services at their local hospital.
In recent years, the UUP has swung from leader to leader; Burrows is the fifth person to lead the party since 2012. The party’s hope was Burrows would provide much-needed stability and allow it to deliver an improved result in May’s election.
The latest polling from LucidTalk/The Belfast Telegraph shows Burrows has done this, taking the party’s approval rating to 16 per cent, ahead of the DUP on 15 per cent.
It has benefited from the DUP’s own problems amid the fallout from the conviction of former leader Jeffrey Donaldson for child sex offences. This week another of that party’s MP, Jim Shannon, was charged with the common assault of a woman – a case his solicitors have said is being “factually contested”.
The UUP is now in the midst of its own political crisis.
When it came to it, Burrows chose local issues over leadership, and over his minister. The challenge he faces is to show the leadership necessary to bring this chaos to an end, and quickly.
| # | Наименование новости | Тональность | Информативность | Дата публикации |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Northern Ireland’s UUP health minister quits with swipe at his party leader | 0 | 10 | 19-08-2026 |
| 2 | UUP leader Jon Burrows to name North’s new health minister on Thursday | 0 | 9.25 | 19-08-2026 |
| 3 | Nigel Farage tries to ‘take back control’ | 0 | 10 | 07-07-2026 |
| 4 | TWO MORE Cabinet ministers QUIT: NI secretary Brandon Lewis and Helen Whately | 0 | 6.31 | 07-07-2022 |
| 5 | Лидер юнионистов Северной Ирландии заявил о своей отставке | 0 | 0 | 17-06-2021 |
| 6 | Waiting for Andy: what will a Burnham premiership mean? | 0 | 10 | 22-06-2026 |
| 7 | ‘It’s a mess’: To collapse Stormont now would benefit no one, but it cannot stay the same | 0 | 7.84 | 17-08-2026 |
| 8 | There is no modern-day Maggie to save Britain from Burnhamism | 0 | 11.77 | 30-07-2026 |
| 9 | Is British politics broken? | 0 | 5 | 15-05-2026 |
| 10 | Andy Burnham says he will retain UK’s pension triple lock | 0 | 10 | 03-07-2026 |