Samuel Morrison: Past year has shown that TUV is much more than a one-man party as it brings strength to unionism
On Saturday we meet for our first party conference since the Westminster election last July. That election was a watershed moment for TUV in a number of regards.
Of course, one had the obvious shock of Jim Allister ending the DUP/Paisley grip of more than half a century on North Antrim - an outcome dismissed as impossible by much of the media but something which your political editor can testify I predicted as possible two weeks out from polling day.
Also significant from a TUV point of view was the fact that in many seats candidates built a very credible platform to leave them challenging for seats in the next Assembly poll.
Finally, with the co-option of Timothy Gaston to the Northern Ireland Assembly, TUV put to bed the idea that we were just a one-man party.
There is little doubt in my mind that had Jim not been returned for North Antrim, the protocol would have been seldom mentioned in the House of Commons.
So anxious were the government and some in Stormont to avoid Mr Allister’s questions in the assembly that they transferred responsibility for much of the infrastructure of the sea border to Westminster - never dreaming that Jim would be in a position to put questions down as an MP; questions which just last week exposed the fact that the cost just of the border posts and checks is fast approaching one billion pounds.
Westminster has also afforded Jim the opportunity through a Private Members Bill to dispel the notion that there is no alternative to the obscenity of the people of Northern Ireland being ruled by laws we do not make, cannot change and which are overseen by a foreign court.
With his Mutual Enforcement Bill he has been able to prove that there is a logical and just alternative - one which was not adopted because of the political agenda of a hostile Irish government.
Those who thought TUV would be left muted in Stormont have had a rude awakening as well.
Timothy Gaston has proved to be a worthy successor to Jim in the assembly.
Shining a light on the Sinn Fein scandal around a press officer and later to become convicted child sex offender;
Asking the telling questions both in committee and in the chamber about the abuse and misuse of public money;
Being the MLA to expose the Sinn Fein solo run designed to oppose Irish signage on Grand Central Station in Sandy Row - a small loyalist community which has frankly been treated abominably by the powers that be for months;
Demanding answers on why the first and deputy first minister squandered £54,000 of taxpayers’ money on a four-day trip to Washington in March last year;
Resisting the woke agenda and ensuring that for the first time a group critical of trans ideology was brought before a Stormont committee.
Tellingly, Jim and Timothy’s hard work is cutting through.
For four years TUV have been polling at a level around the same and sometimes above the UUP and SDLP.
New voices - like deputy leader councillor Ron McDowell - are now commonplace on the airwaves.
Other members of the party may not yet be household names but have demonstrated that they can go head to head with established names in politics and poll votes which would see them win Stormont seats.
So the party will meet in good heart this weekend around a clear theme of bringing strength to unionism.
The truth is that while many within the media would like us to believe unionism is down and out, the consistent polling of TUV in recent years proves that there are many who still respond to an uncompromising message for a simple demand that Northern Ireland be treated fairly - that we should, as the Covenant put it, have “equal citizenship” with the rest of the United Kingdom.
TUV support demonstrates that there remain unionists who have no intention of going gently into the night.
l Samuel Morrison is the TUV press officer