AN Ulster Unionist party officer and former Young Unionist chairman is defecting to the Conservative party of Northern Ireland. Peter Bowles took the decision in protest at the UUP’s recently announced deal with the Progressive Unionist party.

Last Friday Lady Sylvia Hermon, the UUP’s sole Westminster MP, called for the link with the PUP to be severed because of continuing activity by the UVF, the loyalist paramilitary group with which the PUP is associated.

She said the UUP, which accepted the party into the Ulster Unionist grouping in the Northern Ireland assembly, had become “a hostage to fortune”.

Bowles, a councillor in Co Down, is the first defector from a party that has become increasingly divided over the link. Bowles said the circumstances surrounding the ambush of Mark Haddock, a former UVF leader, and the recent arrests of two people in connection with the 1994 UVF massacre at Loughinisland were “the last straws”.

“The Ulster Unionists used to be the party of law and order and now it’s linked with the UVF,” said Bowles. “Those guys haven’t changed at all. They’re still refusing to decommission. A party with links to loyalist paramilitaries is not a party I want to be part of.”

Haddock, who was named in the Dail last year as the subject of a police ombudsman investigation into the 1997 murder of Raymond McCord, was shot on May 30. Darren Moore, a former associate, has been charged with attempted murder.

Last week police arrested two people in connection with the murder of six people in a pub in Loughinisland, a village in Bowles’s constituency. In the attack, a UVF gang sprayed bullets into the bar as customers watched coverage of the Republic of Ireland’s World Cup game against Italy.

According to Bowles, the UUP’s selective boycott of the Policing Board has been another irritant: “The Policing Board carries out an important function and I think it’s a foolish policy by the party. I wasn’t consulted on it and I wasn’t consulted on the PUP deal.”

Bowles said he began talks with David Liddington, the Conservative party’s spokesman on Northern Ireland, following the PUP deal and reached an agreement last week. He will formally announce his defection at a press conference tomorrow evening attended by members of the Conservative party. He will become their only elected representative in Northern Ireland.

“It’s a very difficult decision because I’ve put a lot of time and effort into the Ulster Unionists. But the party has lost its way. There is a lack of direction, a lack of vision and a lack of consultation,” he said.

“The public is to a large extent disengaging from politics here. More and more people are choosing not to vote, particularly in the middle classes. I think the Conservatives can offer an alternative.”

At 25, Bowles is the youngest of the UUP’s six party officers elected at the Ulster Unionist council. He joined the party at the age of 18 and was vice-chairman and later chairman of the Young Unionists.

According to Jeffrey Peel, vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Conservatives, his party has gained 100 new members since the election of David Cameron as leader in December of last year, bringing its total membership to 600.

“We’re planning a major campaign to increase membership over the coming months,” Peel said.

“We’re getting the full support of the national leadership on this. They recognise that Northern Ireland has changed over the past 10 years, although the political system is still in a time warp. We believe that we can move people away from this entrenched sectarianism towards a left-right split.”

The Conservative party is the only British national party that contests elections in the north.

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