Owen Polley: The TUV's fierce opposition to the Irish Sea border has helped transform its fortunes and make it an important force in unionist politics

Last year, the focus of the gathering was Jim Allister’s announcement of a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with Reform UK, ahead of the general election.

That was an interesting attempt to give the TUV’s politics a national dimension, but it already feels like a long time ago.

During the 2024 conference, Reform was led by Richard Tice and his deputy was the indefatigable anti-NI Protocol campaigner, Ben Habib. Both men spoke from the platform, arguing that British citizens here enjoyed fewer rights than their counterparts in Great Britain, due to the sea border.

A month before the election, Nigel Farage announced that he would lead Reform going forward and contest the Westminster seat of Clacton.

Subsequently, Mr Farage publicly supported Jim Allister’s rival, Ian Paisley, in his fight to remain North Antrim MP. This extraordinary intervention came despite the TUV’s election campaign using joint branding with Reform.

Farage continues to show little sign of thinking about Northern Ireland, if it features in his outlook at all. But he could scarcely have foreseen that Allister would beat Paisley. Or that the TUV and Reform leaders would soon be working together in the House of Commons.

No doubt that was awkward, but eight months later, the TUV seems better off keeping a little distance from Reform.

The UK-wide party is doing well in the polls, but Farage fell out spectacularly with another Reform MP, Rupert Lowe, and ousted him from the party amid accusations and counter-accusations. The TUV’s stalwart ally, Ben Habib, has left too and is reportedly considering setting up a new electoral vehicle with Lowe.

The final outcome of all this intrigue is yet to be established.

Many bookmakers still make Farage favourite to become the next prime minister and Reform continues to attract defectors from the Conservatives. Some respected commentators think it could achieve important gains at upcoming by-elections.

At the same time, the party is likely to remain vulnerable to infighting and disagreements. Farage’s supporters claim he is repositioning Reform only subtly, to give it a chance at the next election. In contrast, his critics say that he is a control freak, who won’t accept any differences of opinion and is moving away from elements of his party’s platform that made it popular.

In comparison, the TUV looks united and firm of purpose.

It certainly exceeded most people’s expectations when Mr Allister became MP. And his replacement at Stormont, Timothy Gaston, has made an impressive start, raising inconvenient issues that other unionist MLAs are inclined to shy away from.

There is little doubt, though, that the thing that really transformed the TUV’s fortunes, and made it an important force in unionist politics, is also what it opposes most fiercely: the Irish Sea border.

The TUV has almost certainly won over voters who would previously have considered the party’s image too hardline. They were persuaded otherwise by Allister’s consistent and detailed analysis of the Windsor Framework, which stood in contrast to rather more confusing policies from rival unionist parties.

The sea border helped the TUV to hone its pitch on the Union too. It increasingly used the language of ‘equal citizenship’ to explain its objections to the framework. Allister and his colleagues argued that excluding Northern Ireland from Britain’s political and economic mainstream was a form of inequality.

The DUP’s insistence on overselling its ‘Safeguarding the Union’ deal with the government granted the TUV an opportunity to seem candid and clear-minded in comparison. And it allowed the party to recruit Dan Boucher, the DUP’s former director of policy and research and a former Conservative election candidate, who added intellectual heft to its team.

Gavin Robinson and others implied that the TUV was only free to take a purist position because it did not have the responsibility of leading unionism and finding a workable compromise.

That’s not a point that should be dismissed casually, but nobody compelled the DUP to overstate its achievements so drastically. Now, in defending its deal, Robinson is forced to be less than open about the scale of the problems posed by the sea border. For example, he claimed that new parcels arrangements would lessen barriers with Great Britain, when the haulage industry says the opposite and Royal Mail last week announced new paperwork even for private packages.

In contrast, Mr Allister has been comparatively successful in highlighting sea border issues at Westminster. His private member’s bill, based on ‘mutual enforcement’, is the only alternative to the framework under consideration at the House of Commons. It has the support of all Northern Ireland’s unionist MPs, as well as Reform and heavy-hitters from the Conservative party.

The TUV knows that it will eventually be defeated, but, while it survives, it offers a rallying point for opposition to the protocol.

In opinion polls, the party’s performances since the election have been steady rather than spectacular. But there is every chance that removing the framework could become an even greater priority for unionists over the next year or so, as new issues develop.

It is something of a paradox that the TUV’s opposition to the sea border, which it is dedicated to removing, will continue for the foreseeable future to be its biggest attraction to unionist voters.