Responding to a statement from the DUP’s Gregory Campbell TUV Vice-Chair Keith Harbinson said:

“At least Mr Campbell is able to utter Mr Allister’s name, something which the DUP seemed incapable of doing in press releases prior to the election. However, listening to him talk about injecting honesty into any discussion about politics does sound somewhat strange. Remember this was the man who stood up in a debate of no confidence in Martin McGuinness when he was Minister of Education and, after outlining the pedigree of Sinn Fein/IRA and McGuinness, told the Assembly, “The DUP will never ever give legitimacy to people or a party like that.” Yet today Mr Campbell serves in a government which McGuinness jointly heads!

“This is the sort of nauseating hypocrisy which caused 66,000 Unionists to vote for Jim Allister.  Mr Cambell has said that he and his party are aware of the many factors which affected the result and that they will be addressing those same factors immediately, yet there has been absolutely no mention of the DUP tackling head on, the single biggest factor of the divisions within Unionism, the placement of IRA terrorists to the very heart of our government."

“Mr Campbell needs to recognize that a 1/3 of Unionists in Northern Ireland have refused to bow the knee to Sinn Fein/IRA. If Jim Allister had not stood in this election those people would have had no one to vote for. In fact, TUV brought many ordinary Unionists to the polls who have been abandoned by the DUP and UUP, and this is directly attributable to the fact that the combined Unionist vote, as a percentage of the poll, has increased since the last European election.

“Unionism has not been damaged by TUV, the DUP have, and this election has illustrated that the two are not synonymous. Mr Campbell and his party do not have a divine right to Unionist votes and the sooner they recognize this reality the better.

“One positive feature of Mr Campbell’s statement was his call for an end to inter-Unionist fighting.  Mr Campbell states that Unionism has been damaged by infighting, but I would respectfully suggest to him that it has been damaged to a much more significant degree by the imposition of Mandatory coalition government with Sinn Fein/IRA.  I do wholeheartedly agree however with the assertion that Unionist wrangling must cease, and would suggest that the only way that this could be achieved is if all Unionists united behind a policy of opposition to mandatory coalition and stopped propping Sinn Fin/IRA up in government. Only by moving to that ground can the DUP hope to “reconnect” with ordinary Unionists.  Unionism PLC is indeed bigger than any particular party or any individual, and many would do well to rally to the cause rather than an office."