UCUNF, you go …

In the Westminster elections in 2005 the two parties that make up UCUNF received 130,032 votes – 18.1% of the total.

In 2010 the vote for combined entity of UCUNF dropped to 102,361 votes – or 16.3% of the total.

Of course, the 2005 total includes both Sylvia Hermon in North Down and Tom Elliott in Fermanagh and South Tyrone – neither of whom counted towards UCUNF's total this time around.

However, UCUNF did have a candidate in North Down yesterday – the awful Ian Parsley – and campaigned vigorously against Hermon, so they cannot exclude that constituency from a comparison.

If FST is removed from the 2005 figures, the combined UUP/Tory vote was 121,163 – 16.9% of the total poll.

So it seems that the non-merger of the UUP and the Tories – even at a time of Tory advance in Britain, and distaste with the DUP's Robinson family – has actually gone backwards in both absolute and relative terms; from 121,163 votes (16.9%) in 2005 to 102,361 votes (16.3%) in 2010.

What a failure! The inability of UCUNF to win any seats is perhaps indicative of the whole project. It managed to lose its sole MP, and despite shackling itself to an ascendant British party it managed to lose votes. It proclaimed non-sectarianism and then entered a nakedly sectarian pact in Fermanagh and South Tyrone – thereby losing the support of some of its most capable supporters.

It's time to quietly drop the whole project. UCUNF is a dead party walking.