THE recent LucidTalk poll for the Belfast Telegraph asked unionist voters to assess the performances of five prominent unionist figures in the wake of the latest Drumcree crisis.
The personalities showing a bit of leg to Loyal Ulster for this political beauty contest were:
Jim Allister
Gavin Robinson
Carla Lockhart
Jon Burrows
Jamie Bryson
The results were startling in a number of different ways. How startling depends on whether you were standing on Drumcree hill or the Garvaghy Road as the drama unfolded; in what ways depended on whether you thought everybody should go home or whether the PSNI should have beaten the people of the Garvaghy Road off the, ah, Garvaghy Road.
Picking the bones out of the poll for the BelTel was the paper’s political correspondent, Suzanne Breen. Her first paragraph – her key take, in other words, from the five-person confidence vote – read: “Loyalist Jamie Bryson is more popular with unionists than Gavin Robinson, according to a new LucidTalk poll.”
That is certainly one way of looking at it. Meanwhile, Ms Breen’s piece was headlined ‘Poll bombshell for DUP as Jamie Bryson more popular with unionists than Gavin Robinson’; and while the journalist almost certainly didn’t write the headline, it doubled down on the contention that the poll had been excellent news for the only non-elected person in the running*: the Donaghadee Dynamo, the Lidl Lawyer; the Bouncer Boss, Eddie the Legal – Bryson, J, LLB.
*Jon Burrows is technically not elected.
As far as the BelTel headline and story went, it was indeed a cheering bit of news for Portadown District’s (para)legal adviser. Being more popular than the leader of the largest unionist party when your only ever foray into real politics got you fewer votes than the average person has friends, acquaintances and family is what’s known in North Down as A Result.
But behind the headline, tucked discreetly away amidst the data, should a reader have bothered to look (and most don’t), was a reality that will give My Cousin Binny considerable pause for thought as he reportedly considers an Upper Bann Stormont run on the back of his BelTel-accorded triumph, was a rather more uncomfortable truth: Jamie came second last.
Claiming the win was Upper Bann MLA Carla Lockhart – hardly surprising, as it was a home match for the Upper Bann MP, who for five weeks was the most famous person in the North thanks to her very public spat with her boss, a spat at once as sour and enjoyable as a Haribo Tangtastic. That turbo-charged boost to her name recognition shot the Queen of Ulster to an unassailable 68 per cent in the LucidTalk unionist popularity rankings.
Nobody could have been blamed for believing that the support of nigh-on two-thirds of the unionist people sent a clear message that Lockhart’s uncompromising stance in favour of Portadown District’s right to walk Garvaghy. But the picture became rather less clear – not to say murky – when it emerged that UUP leader Jon Burrows had run Lockhart awfully close. Just two points behind her on 66 per cent, the North Antrim MLA’s powerful showing indicates that Loyal Ulster, far from being four-square behind the Brethren, is in fact in a bit of a tizzy over the whole thing. Burrows, remember, didn’t go anywhere near Drumcree, and, while paying lip service to the right of ‘Legal 35’ to walk the Garvaghy Road, he rather astutely concentrated his fire on the as-yet untested claims of lawbreaking on the part of senior Shinners. He thus achieved the happy compromise of appearing strong while keeping his distance from Garvaghy Ground Zero. In the not-too-distant past the UUP was mercilessly battered in the polls every time the DUP and Sinn Féin went toe-to-toe on flegs and flutes. Not this time. Burrows’ remarkable popularity score in the LucidTalk poll is, of course, a vote of confidence in Burrows’ handling of the recent crisis, but it is first and foremost a rare and welcome indication that unionism and loyalism may no longer be relied on to salute when the culture war flag is run up the pole. It remains to be seen how that will play out during next year’s marching/bonfire season.
60 per cent for Jim Allister after five weeks of flag-flavoured hysteria can only be seen as a disappointment. Allister is normally guaranteed the Gold in the Parading Olympics, so his signature chilly smile will have turned positively Baltic to be below the lily-livered UUP on the podium as the flag was raised and GSTK began to play.
At least Allister cracked the magic 60 mark. Trailing in fourth on 55 per cent – or second last, if we’re being cruelly honest – would have been a piss-poor result for Bryson at the best of times, but the poll came hot on the heels of the most concentrated burst of publicity the would-be lawyer has enjoyed in a publicity-drenched career. One minute he was standing heroically on the hill at Drumcree in a Rangers fleece; the next he was claiming victory on the court steps with foul-mouthed and furious republicans bellowing in his ear; one minute he was leading the media a merry dance at Hillsborough Castle, the next he was addressing a large crowd of Orangemen in Portadown town centre. Yet still he’s ended up considerably less popular than Jon Burrows, a man hitherto best known for his entertainingly idiosyncratic hand gestures and his love of incarcerated goldfish and sheepdogs.
Only the BelTel can explain why missing out on last place to the increasingly hapless and despondent Gavin Robinson is good news for anybody, much less the self-appointed Evita of Loyal Ulster. My dog would have avoided last place in that contest, and – altogether now! – he’s been dead five years. Had Paddy Power laid a book before the popularity poll was conducted, you couldn’t have got a bet on Bryson to top it. On name recognition alone he puts Carla Lockhart in the ha’penny place (did you know she pronounces it Lockert? I didn’t). And the absolute centrality of his role in the hot and high-profile legal wins that brought Drumcree ’26 to a furious boil was there for all of Loyal Ulster to see and hear and read over and over again.
And yet here he stands: Fourth out of five.
He can do no other.
