The TUV went remarkably quiet after the May 2010 Westminster elections. However, this weekend, party members will be converging in the Royal Hotel in Cookstown for their party conference. Outside the party, it wasn’t terribly well advertised. While I received a belated invitation last week, I’m not free to attend. Not sure if anyone from Slugger will be along? Printing out their conference programme used up more red and blue ink that I’d bargained for. There’s still the old-fashioned use …
Right, moving on to the TUV. 2010 represented the first General election to be fought by Traditional Unionist Voice. How did they do?
A total of 26,300 votes over the 10 seats fought split:
Welsh Nationalist. Rugby Fan. Know a bit about History and Railways…
David Vance, defeated TUV candidate in East Belfast, faces having his long running blog, A Tangled Web, closed by his host over numerous instances of ‘hate speech’ in violation of Terms of Service. To Mr. David Vance, We have received several complaints regarding hate speech on your website. Per our terms, “Content with the sole purpose of causing harm or inciting hate, or content that could be reasonably considered as slanderous or libelous.” is not permitted. ADDS ATW complies and …
In a special article for Slugger O’Toole, David Gordon examines the General Election fall-out for unionism – with a couple of quotes from his newly-updated book, The Fall of the House of Paisley. Released over Easter, it has a new final chapter entitled The Fall of the House of Robinson? Cometh the hour, here comes Arlene? If Peter Robinson goes as DUP leader, the smart money seems to be on Nigel Dodds as party leader, with Arlene Foster as First …
A few weeks ago I tried to present some ways the parties could judge if the election was a success or not. DUP Retaining seats all their Westminster seats will be the main aim. Adding a seat in South Belfast, as a full gain or countering a single seat loss elsewhere, would also be an excellent result. The can’t expect a gain in vote in percentage or real terms from the last Westminster election as the TUV are now involved …
Video: Peter Robinson on improving devolution Voluntary coalition seems to be a shibboleth connected with Jim Allister and TUV but in reality all three Unionist parties would prefer voluntary coalition with some form of qualified majority voting put in place to enable a more normal form of Assembly inline with Wales & Scotland which would include a formal opposition, compared to the mandatory coalition we currently operate where nearly all the parties are in government and will remain in government …
Excluding the party group photograph in the TUV manifesto [pdf] the other photographs total seven TUV members (four images of Allister). This compares to nine images of SF members. A word count for the document gives the following: Jim Allister – 3 Paisley – 5 Martin McGuinness – 7 Robinson – 7 DUP – 23 Sinn Féin – 52 TUV – 56 Blank
Splintered’s guides are shaping up to be the blog gem of this campaign, though he’s not got as far as East Belfast yet. The common wisdom is that Robinson is safe. His majority of just 6,ooo majority in 2005 (which is towards the lower end of the scale in Northern Ireland), would be comfortable in normal times. But, for the Robinson family, these are not normal times. Here’s how it worked out last time amongst the main contenders (the nationalist …
