Burrows 'completely rejects' Beattie's attack on party

The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader has rejected accusations that the party used "dirty tricks" against Doug Beattie.

Jon Burrows said he does not recognise the former UUP MLA's claims there was an attempt to oust him.

He was speaking for the first time since Beattie quit the party and launched a scathing attack on Burrows, saying he "regretted" ever persuading him to join the UUP.

In response to suggestions that the party had acted in a "vindictive" way, Burrows replied: "I completely reject that. I ordinarily would not be going into a tit-for-tat with any member of this party... but I need to clear the record on this."

Burrows said he regretted Beattie's comments and that he had respect for the former soldier's service and his membership of the party, which ended on Sunday after 12 years.

"Difficult things have been said, I don't think they've been helpful," Burrows said.

"I think it's disappointing Doug made those comments, I don't agree with the way he has handled his resignation."

In his interview on the Nolan Show on Monday, Beattie urged voters in North Antrim not to vote for Burrows in next year's assembly election.

Asked if those remarks hurt, Burrows said he did not want to "litigate" personal jibes in public and that there were people in life "going through difficulties much worse than we're going through".

He also sought to clarify his account of how the party had initiated a disciplinary against Beattie days before he quit the party, in relation to historical misogynistic posts on social media.

Burrows said a "third party" report was made to the party drawing attention to the material that remained on the Upper Bann MLA's timeline, which the UUP leader said "objectified" women.

In 2022, Beattie apologised and said he was "deeply ashamed and embarrassed" by a number of historical tweets he published.

Burrows said he had "high standards" and that the reports needed to be taken seriously.

Questioned about the timing of the issue being brought to his attention and if that could have appeared vindictive as Beattie claimed, Burrows said: "I don't know where the complainant comes from and I'm not going to discuss that, what I am going to say is this was a senior MLA who had an inappropriate tweet and I asked him to remove it."

He said other conduct that came to his attention was "deeply concerning", highlighting a video of Beattie claiming to be canvassing with councillors Ian Burns and Glenn Barr in Banbridge, County Down.

On Monday, Beattie admitted he was not with the councillors and that he had been "economical with the truth".

When pressed, he said, "I lied, I was dishonest".

Burrows said politicians could not "mislead" the electorate, but added: "I don't want to have a character assassination of Doug Beattie, all we were going to do was use the proper processes to deal with the serious issues."

He said suggestions that the party had been orchestrating behind the scenes to suspend him so that he could not run as a candidate for the party in next year's election were "not accurate".

"I was presented with information, I had other concerns about conduct... those are not acceptable standards, I don't want to demonise Doug Beattie. That was going to be properly adjudicated and investigated but Doug decided to leave - I deeply regret that," added the party leader.

Asked about divisions with the rest of his assembly team at Stormont, Burrows said he valued all of his MLAs, adding: "There's a job of work to do within any teams. I'm in up for listening, I'll be speaking to my MLAs and continuing to have a relationship with them."

He said he had "deep support" from across the UUP membership, councillors and the party management board.