A political earthquake in Northern Ireland on election night saw the Paisley family dynasty end after more than five decades and usher in one of Westminster's most extreme MPs
A political earthquake in Northern Ireland on election night saw the Paisley family dynasty end after more than five decades and usher in one of Westminster's most extreme MPs
During the summer the unionists areas of North Antrim are festooned with Union Flags, which fly alongside Northern Ireland flags in a clear show of allegiance to the UK . Both politician and party were little known outside the confines of Northern Ireland politics but Allister upset the odds and beat Paisley by 450 votes. The slender margin of victory has nevertheless been described as a political earthquake.
Allister is not a fan of how the Northen Ireland peace process came about. Asked if he celebrates the 26 years of peace since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, he shows his view has not changed.“There should be no reward for doing what’s right and stopping doing what’s wrong. Yet we have it. The peace process is built upon reward and concession, turning a blind eye to all sorts of issues.”
One man, who asks not to be named due to his former life at a member of the loyalist paramilitary group the Ulster Defence Association, is willing to talk after we meet on Ballymoney’s Main Street. He says he knew Paisley Snr well back in the day, and his son today. Indeed, so close are the two parties, that in March Reform’s then leader Richard Tice spoke at the TUV conference and announced an electoral pact to stand mutually agreed candidates in Northern Ireland constituencies in the general election.
“The life of the child is something which has been diminished,” he believes. “The safest place for any unborn should be in the mother’s womb, and yet it turns out, very, very often to be the most dangerous.” He believes climate change has been “over sold and exaggerated” and that it is “inevitable” over “eons of time”.
“I’m a politician, not a religious leader,” he says. “I think that all of those issues are for individuals and for families to reach their views. On the well-trodden Westminster ground of Europe, Allister is in step with many in the Conservative Party, believing Brexit was the correct decision but that is has been implemented poorly,“It’s surprisingly simple,” he claims. “It is that of mutual enforcement. Go back to the fundamentals of international trade.
“The failure to give Brexit to Northern Ireland has increased that threat, because we’re now in a position where our union has been broken,” he says. “We’re now a condominium, in part ruled by the UK and in part ruled by the EU. So, we can no longer say we’re a full part of the United Kingdom.
The party argues that Stormont’s power-sharing arrangements are not in the best interests of Northern Ireland because such a government will always consist of parties having political objectives which are opposites, and thus no common programme for government can be agreed upon. John McAuley, a DUP councillor, explains party members in North Antrim have not heard a peep from their former MP since his losing speech on election night.
However, with the two parties accounting for around 40 per cent of the vote in the whole of Northern Ireland, it remains unlikely that, for the time being, any government either side of the Irish Sea will back a reunification referendum. Blathnait Ni Artghaile is 32 and, along with her friend Ide Hughes, 21, are two of very few people willing to talk.
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