Editorial: Jim Allister points out what is really going on, and is a vital unionist voice in Northern ireland

The conference for the Traditional Unionist Voice party was held in Cookstown on Saturday, as it has been in recent years. ​It was a relatively small political gathering, of a party that has only one MLA and has only ever had a handful of councillors. But the scale of the event belies its significance.

While Jim Allister has long had a large personal following, his party had never broken through until last year’s Stormont election, when it did in terms of the numbers of votes cast (but not in terms of seats). Mr Allister had already shown his appeal by securing large votes in the Northern Ireland-wide MEP elections of 2009, 2014 and 2019. But it was only in the May assembly contest that the TUV as a party got a big vote across NI.

Sorcha Eastwood, the Alliance MLA, recently unwisely taunted Mr Allister for only having one seat in Stormont. Yet Mr Allister got almost 8% of the vote. In only two assembly contests since 1998 did Alliance win a notably larger share of the ballots cast than the TUV did last May. Mr Allister on Saturday referred to the 65,000 votes the TUV won in that election, which, when added to the DUP total, was the same vote total that Sinn Fein got. Mr Allister would probably have won closer to 100,000 votes had it not been for unionist concerns of SF topping the poll.

So it is clear that he has a lot of support, and little wonder. Mr Allister has since he split from the DUP in 2007 often acted as the conscience of unionism. While it is almost too painful for unionists to face up to the perpetual concessions that are granted to a party that celebrates IRA terrorism in an increasingly triumphalist way, Mr Allister never ceases to point out what is really going on.

Mr Allister’s view that Stormont should stay down is not without risks. But he is a vital unionist voice.