A small local election offers Jim Allister's Traditional Unionist Voice party its first chance to inflict damage on the DUP, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
Next Wednesday, up to 8,000 souls from the Dromore ward will select a new politician to sit on Banbridge Council to replace former Irish rugby international Tyrone Howe. Sensibly, you might conclude, Howe judged that his broadcasting rugby commentating and other commitments were of more pressing demand than his Ulster Unionist seat.
The DUP candidate Paul Stewart drives a high-powered three-litre Audi A6. He chats, answers his mobile phone - "yes, fine, I'll ring you back later" - while overtaking on a narrow country road, all at the same time. He's canvassing. "I know the corners on these roads," he says, which isn't at all reassuring. We're heading up Slieve Croob in a deep mist, none of which slows down the Lewis Hamilton of Co Down. A car appears ahead on an even narrower stretch of road, motoring at a country pace. Eventually a micro space opens up and Stewart zooms by.
This is a driven politician. "This is a local election about local issues," he says. But nobody believes him, not the people of Dromore, not the candidate himself, and not the former allies, now foes, Jim Allister and Ian Paisley. This is new DUP versus old, disaffected DUP, who are now trading under the new brand of the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) led by MEP Jim Allister.
Allister abandoned Ian Paisley in protest at the decision to share power with Sinn Féin, notwithstanding the fact that the DUP had welcomed Allister back into the party and handed him the safe Euro seat that Paisley vacated (and that other DUP members were slavering for).
This is personal between Paisley and Allister. The result just might have deeper political implications as well.
There are seven candidates, but in terms of big-picture politics, the focus is on just two of them, 29-year-old Stewart for the DUP and 24-year-old solicitor Keith Harbinson for the TUV. But can the TUV inflict damage come Thursday's count? Can Allister create a platform that can challenge the DUP for future Assembly, Westminster and European seats, as is his ambition? There are differing views. Chris and Clifford, who work in the small Ulsterbus body repair shop on the outskirts of Dromore, think not.
"We have to move on, we have to keep the past in the past," says Clifford. "There's been too much 'no, no', too much 'never, never' for years now. It's time to move forward."
The younger Chris agrees. "Things are moving, things will work out yet. Most people are happy. Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days." And that's the general view in Dromore and out the country on this canvass. Raymond Jess has reservations about what Allister calls the "Chuckle Coalition" of Paisley and Martin McGuinness, but says, "I think realistically there is only one hope, and that is to make devolution work. There is no point in fighting with people all the time. It will never get us anywhere."
I MEET HARBINSON in the car park opposite the gospel hall in Dromore where women are going in to pray. There is an impressive TUV team of a dozen men and women, some postering, others canvassing. Harbinson is heading out to call on houses in the countryside and feels having The Irish Times along would cramp his style. Still, he poses for the photographer in Dromore Square, and local man Nigel Burns is happy to be in a picture with him. But he doesn't know how he will vote. "I am a middle-of-the-road man myself," he says.
Ivor McConnell, a 38-year-old teacher from Portadown, Co Armagh and Marcus Lecky (32) a mature theology student from Warringstown, Co Armagh, are on poster detail - a job, Marcus says, he happily did in the past for the DUP. He switched allegiance because he was "very, very disappointed with the DUP U-turn".
Both men, just like Harbinson and Allister, say they have no objection to powersharing, "just to terrorists in government". They won't accept the DUP argument that expecting to sideline Sinn Féin from power is "la la politics".
It may seem like a "done deal", but just as the "DUP chipped away at the Belfast Agreement", so could the TUV chip away at what the DUP has signed up to, says McConnell. What was personally critical for him was that he was being true to his "conscience" to expose what he believed was "morally" wrong. "Our objective is to lay down a marker here," he adds. "We can be a major thorn in the side of the DUP."
Jim Allister won't quite predict victory. "The nature of this area is that in 2005 the DUP got 50 per cent of the vote. So, if they are right that they haven't lost any support, they should be winning the election on the first count. They won't because they have lost support and that will be reflected in a credible vote for us." At the very least, behind all the talk, a strong second for Harbinson is what Allister needs.
Certainly, the DUP is taking nothing for granted. All the big guns have been dragooned into this Co Down backwater including Dr Paisley, Jeffrey Donaldson, and several other DUP MPs and Assembly members.
STEWART SAYS HE has visited the home of all 8,000 voters in Dromore ward, and you'd believe him, the way he drives. Says Allister, "The quantum of effort that the DUP has put into this tells you this is a lot more than a by-election."
In a wonderful irony, DUP people on the ground, while confident, warn about apathy from supporters. "Jim Allister's people will come out 100 per cent, because they have an axe to grind. It's easier to vote when you are against something that when you are for something," says one official. "But when things are going well, as they are now, and maybe it's raining on polling day, then maybe some DUP voters will decide there's no real need to vote and stay at home. That's a concern." The DUP is probably right to expect victory for their vroom vroom candidate, but winning well is what Ian Paisley really craves. All politics is local.