The DUP can’t blame Reform for dividing unionists

While Michelle O’Neill and Emma Pengelly, the First and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, were in Washington last week for their annual St Patrick’s Day pat on the head from the Biden administration, a more subversive gathering was taking place in Kells, a small village in Country Antrim. 

Traditional Unionist Voice, the party fronted by Jim Allister, was holding its annual conference. For most observers this would fail to register, but the announcement that the TUV has entered into a pact with Reform UK – including running agreed candidates at the general election in Northern Ireland – brought it wider attention. 

At the heart of the agreement is putting the DUP’s ‘acceptance of the Irish Sea border’ under scrutiny at the election. Predictably, the idea of a third unionist electoral force – after all, at the 2022 Assembly elections, the TUV increased its share of the vote – has led to dark mutterings about ‘splitting the vote’.