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DUBLIN – Reform UK leader Nigel Farage endorsed the wrong party in “the Northern Ireland thing” – to the delight of the Democratic Unionists and the disbelief of Traditional Unionist Voice.
Farage, who became Reform’s leader in place of Richard Tice barely a week ago, effectively tore up his party’s March partnership with the TUV in a London interview with Press Association.
Tice had committed Reform to cooperate on the campaign trail with TUV leader Jim Allister in Northern Ireland, where Reform is not fielding candidates of its own. Like the TUV, Reform rejects the compromise deal on post-Brexit trade rules between the Conservatives and DUP that delivered the revival of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government at Stormont.
On Monday, Farage instead endorsed the incumbent Democratic Unionist MPs Ian Paisley (North Antrim) and Sammy Wilson (East Antrim), both of whom have been arch-Brexiteers and critical of the DUP-backed deal, too.
“As far as the Northern Ireland thing is concerned, I want to make it clear that whilst there have been negotiations going on in previous times, I will personally be endorsing Ian Paisley and Sammy Wilson,” Farage told PA’s Claudia Savage, who reminded him of the Reform-TUV alliance.
“Well, new leadership brings change. I wish the TUV well, but I’m gonna stand up to support Sammy Wilson and Ian Paisley as people I fought with all through the Brexit years,” Farage said.
A cock-a-hoop DUP welcomed Farage’s surprise U-turn – and called on Allister to remove Reform’s logos from all TUV advertisements.
“Nigel Farage is a household name and we welcome his endorsement as the best pro-union candidate in our constituencies,” Paisley crowed.
Allister, who is running against Paisley in North Antrim and features Reform logos on his campaign literature and posters – including one tweeted a few hours before Farage’s ambush – was unusually slow to comment.
The TUV hopeful issued a terse statement that his party had “kept faith” with Reform and found Farage’s U-turn “disappointing and not compatible with the content of a conversation I had with him last week.”
POLITICO contacted Farage’s spokesman Gawain Towler who initially insisted that the Northern Ireland policy predated Farage’s elevation to the leadership. “Nothing has changed since Tice went over to Ulster,” he said, referring to the former Reform chief’s speech to the TUV annual conference in March.
But when POLITICO relayed Farage’s words praising the DUP duo rather than Allister and apparently turning the page on the TUV deal, the spokesperson said: “Clearly I’m wrong. Clearly I don’t know what I’m talking about!”
While the TUV isn’t expected to win any Commons seats, its running of candidates in DUP marginals on a “TUV-No Sea Border” platform risks splitting the hard-line unionist vote and handing seats to the center-ground Alliance Party or moderate Ulster Unionists. The DUP is defending eight of Northern Ireland’s 18 seats and faces potentially close fights in South Antrim, Lagan Valley and East Belfast, the power base for DUP leader Gavin Robinson.
