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After Basil McCrea went on our airwaves yesterday to criticise the delay in Sir Reg's departure and to express doubts about an unelected member such as Mike Nesbitt being groomed for the leadership, today the UUP hierarchy has hit back in the shape of the party chairman, David Campbell.

Mr Campbell says there was widespread dissatisfaction at the last UUP Executive "at the behaviour of Basil McCrea in attempting to conduct Party business through the media." he adds for good measure that "the Party will no longer tolerate individual members whose indiscipline threatens the efforts of the wider membership whose primary focus is on the recovery of our Party and our Country. It should also be noted that, while Mr McCrea is an MLA, he cannot be described as a 'senior' member of the Ulster Unionist Party. Mr McCrea has never held a senior post within the UUP Assembly Group, was not voted on to the current Executive by his Constituency Association, and is not a Party Officer."

Ouch. I can't imagine that Mr McCrea, who is probably the most articulate member of the UUP Assembly Group, will let that go unanswered. Having brilliantly engineered a situation in which they have lost their only MP and one of their MLAs, maybe the party hierarchy are happy to make another MLA walk the plank. Strange that the refusal to tolerate individual members indisipline did not provoke a similar slap down to David McNarry when he pronounced Sir Reg Empey "finished" on our election coverage. According to the Belfast Telegraph, quoting Fred Cobain, Basil McCrea's comments may lead to disciplinary action depending on the outcome of a meeting on Tuesday.

David Campbell, meanwhile, has come in for some criticism of his own from the local Tory Treasurer, Roger Lomas, who has resigned from that post because of his disgruntlement with various aspects of the UCUNF campaign. In his statement Mr Lomas singles out the UUP Chairman, Mr Campbell, and the UUP Treasurer, Mark Cosgrove, who he accuses of being "responsible for the artificial problems of candidate selection".

Mr Lomas also takes a crack at Owen Paterson's Chief of Staff Jonathan Cain, accusing him of being responsible for the "disastrous 'Hatfield' incident" - a reference to the talks involving the DUP and UUP. However it's understood that Mr Cain himself harboured serious doubts about the Hatfield House talks, so maybe attempts to label him as the architect of that ill fated initiative are wide of the mark.

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