I've been watching a couple of threads over at the Young Unionists blog with interest recently, following David Ervine's decision to join the UUP grouping in Stormont, allowing the Ulster Unionists to claim an extra seat in any potential executive.

I can't make up my mind on the merits of this idea. Frankly the motive of taking one of the 10 executive seats from Sinn Fein under the d'Hondt formula is about as appealing a motivation as one could find in Northern Ireland politics, but the fact that Ervine is the leader of a party with links to active terrorists is a very obvious and very large fly in the ointment. Nationalists and republicans have been understandably angry, accusing the UUP of double-standards - the fact is: so have many unionists.

Follow up:

On one hand, the UUP could now be seen to be promoting terrorism. On the other hand, unlike any Sinn Fein politician I can think of, David Ervine has repented over his actions, and admitted that what he did was wrong. The question is how loyalists and more generally, working-class unionists, can be brought into play, as it were, in Northern Ireland's political life. I don't believe the constant victimhood preaching and negativity of their current party of choice is constructive.

I don't know whether or not it was right or wrong to bring Ervine into the Assembly grouping, but it's done now. Maybe they can use the situation to gain more than it would appear was their aim. Perhaps there's an opportunity here for the a party traditionally perceived as detached from the working class to reconnect with their roots and make sure everyone benefits from the new (relatively) peaceful scenario we find ourselves in. I think the Ulster Unionists have taken a big risk - including the risk of alienating an already fragmented support. It would be a shame if they didn't use this arrangement to try and gain something more meaningful than a single executive seat: the trust of ordinary working unionists.

Of course it could get better - depending how ambitious we want to get. The Hume-Adams talks are widely credited with bringing the IRA in from the cold, and there's always a chance that this could be a chance for the Ulster Unionists to try and accomplish the same feat in respect of the loyalist groups. I won't hold my breath, we can live in hope.

The only thing I can say for certain is that it is a gambit for the Ulster Unionists, and only time will tell if it will pay off or backfire.