The Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) is a right-wing unionist political party in Northern Ireland. In common with all other Northern Irish unionist parties, the TUV's political programme has as its sine qua non the preservation of Northern Ireland's place within the United Kingdom. A founding precept of the party is that "nothing which is morally wrong can be politically right".
History The TUV was formed in December 2007 by Jim Allister after he and others had resigned from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in March of that year.; ; At the time of his resignation, Allister was a prominent figure in the DUP and held the position of Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the party having been elected to the European Parliament in 2004. The reason for the split was DUP leader Ian Paisley's March 2007 consent to the St Andrews Agreement and his willingness to become First Minister of Northern Ireland alongside a deputy First Minister from the Irish republican party Sinn Féin.
Prior to the St Andrews Agreement, the DUP had presented itself as an 'anti-Agreement' unionist party; opposed to numerous aspects of the Good Friday Agreement, e.g., the release of paramilitary prisoners before the end of their jail sentences, and the participation of Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland government without complete decommissioning of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) weapons and cessation of all IRA activity. The TUV has been an exception among Northern Irish unionist parties in consistently opposing the presence of Sinn Féin in the Northern Ireland government. After Allister's resignation from the DUP, he continued to occupy his European Parliament seat, sitting as an independent MEP until the following European election in 2009 when he was not re-elected.
In terms of electoral success and financial income, Traditional Unionist Voice is the third largest unionist party in Northern Ireland, behind the Democratic Unionist Party and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). It is usually considered by political commentators to be a small party and characterised as being more hardline than other Northern Irish unionist parties.
Since 2011, the TUV has occupied one seat in the Northern Ireland Assembly. In 2024, they won their first seat in the United Kingdom House of Commons. The party also holds some seats on local councils in Northern Ireland. Its most prominent elected representative and best-known figure remains Jim Allister whose North Antrim constituency is the heartland of the party.
Since 2008, the party president has been former East Londonderry Westminster MP William Ross.
In March 2024, the party formed an electoral pact with Reform UK, stating that the two parties would stand mutually agreed candidates in Northern Ireland constituencies in the 2024 United Kingdom general election.; In this election, the party won its first Westminster Member of Parliament (MP), electing Jim Allister as MP for North Antrim.
Ideology and votes of elected representatives
The Traditional Unionist Voice was founded in 2007 as a protest movement rather than as a political party. They announced that it was their intention to "occupy the traditional unionist ground" which, they said, had been abandoned by the DUP when the latter party signed the St Andrews Agreement and agreed to form a government with the Irish Republican party Sinn Féin. In 2008, the TUV began to contest elections as a political party with the declared aim of building a democratic opposition to what they described as "the DUP/Sinn Fein regime". The TUV maintains that certain aspects of the Good Friday Agreement represent a poor deal for the unionist community of Northern Ireland, and refuse to accept that someone with a terrorist conviction should be allowed to hold ministerial office in the government of Northern Ireland.
Jim Allister had been the party's sole MLA since 2011 until he was elected to the House of Commons in the 2024 general election; after being elected, he was replaced by Timothy Gaston. Allister's voting record, his contributions to debates and a list of bills he has proposed in the Northern Ireland Assembly are accessible on the Assembly's Information Management portal.
The TUV focuses most of its energies upon matters relating to the unionist/nationalist political cleavage which has dominated Northern Ireland politics since 1921. Its policies on matters beyond the Northern Ireland constitutional question can be described as right-wing and socially conservative, and they emphasise a strong attachment to "traditional family values". The party opposes euthanasia, abortion, and what it calls "the dilution of marriage".
Most of the policies in the following list can be found in all TUV election manifestos since 2009.
Economic policy The TUV advocates an economically liberal, low taxation economy, with as much freedom of choice to small businesses as possible. They prefer that government should run a balanced budget and have been consistently critical of what they call 'Stormont Squander' of tax revenues.
The TUV want to cut corporation tax from 25% to 15% over three years.
Climate change The TUV has emphasised a continuing place for fossil fuels/hydrocarbon energy as a part of the energy mix for the economy but also support development of renewable energy sources. They believe there is a need for local recycling facilities. They see farmers as "custodians of the land" who have a part to play in the long-term conservation of the natural world.; In 2022, the TUV voted against a target of net zero emissions by 2050.
Euthanasia and assisted dying The TUV opposes euthanasia. In June 2025, party leader and the party's only MP in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, Jim Allister, voted against the legalisation of assisted dying.
Abortion law The TUV opposed the introduction of The Abortion (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2020 which substantially expanded the grounds wherein abortion could be demanded. The party holds a "pro-life" position. The TUV reaffirmed its opposition to abortion in its 2024 UK general election manifesto.
Same-sex marriage In the TUV's 2015 manifesto (before the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland in January 2020) it stated that it, "oppose[s] any redefinition of marriage" and "defend[s] traditional family values ... believing that that is the bedrock for the success of society".; As of 2024, the party is still against same-sex marriage.
Immigration The TUV advocates a controlled-immigration approach with effective border checks and a 'points-style' application procedure whereby preference is given to prospective immigrants having skillsets which are in demand in Northern Ireland. The TUV has said that it agrees with Reform UK's policies on migration.
Education Their position is that academic selection (grammar schools) should remain an option within the education system for those children whose abilities are suited to it but that all types of secondary school must be given equal priority in funding.
Health The TUV opposed closure of residential care homes which had been operated by the NHS and they supported the retention of a mix of public and private sector residential care home provision. They believe that when there is a public inquiry into the response to COVID-19 pandemic in Northern Ireland, a key element should be the question of whether care homes were sufficiently protected from the virus. The TUV opposed mandatory vaccine passports and argued that the Northern Ireland government was too cautious in easing lockdown restrictions and that Northern Irish schools should have re-opened sooner than they did.
Human rights The TUV wants the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.
Brexit The TUV strongly supported Brexit. Their grounds for doing so included an opposition to fiscal transfers from the UK to the European Union and what they described as the subordination of local labour market, trade and other laws to the supremacy of EU law. They wish to see the Northern Ireland Protocol annulled.
Localism: referendum on council rates The TUV's Council Election manifesto of 2023 proposed that any local council wishing to increase rates by more than 5% should first seek approval for this from voters who would be asked to approve or to veto the rise via local referendum. The party suggested that this would help "deliver value for money" in local councils. The Localism Act 2011 had already introduced such a statutory obligation in England: since when, only one English local council has proposed a rate rise above the statutory limit (Bedfordshire council in 2015) but the proposed rates increase was overwhelmingly rejected by voters in the subsequent local referendum.
Power sharing A salient difference between the TUV and the other Northern Irish unionist parties is the TUV's consistent opposition to the arrangements for formation of government in Northern Ireland as prescribed by the Good Friday Agreement and the subsequent St Andrews Agreement.
Northern Irish governments are formed via a type of consociationalist power-sharing termed 'mandatory coalition', and the government ministers who make up the Northern Ireland Executive are overseen by two first ministers. In practice this has meant that one first minister is appointed from among the unionist parties in the Assembly and the other first minister from among the Irish nationalist parties. Furthermore, ministerial roles in the Northern Ireland Executive are apportioned (via the D'Hondt mathematical formula) to political parties according to their respective strengths in the Assembly. The TUV argues that these 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. The TUV would prefer to see the formation of government via the 'voluntary coalition' model which operates in most democratic countries. Voluntary coalition allows for any group of parties in an Assembly to form a government provided that they can agree on a programme for government and can command a majority in the Assembly. In the event that no voluntary coalition could be negotiated, the TUV would prefer that Northern Ireland be governed from Westminster while retaining the Assembly and its associated committees - so-called 'legislative devolution'.
Election history
Local by-elections The party's first electoral contest was the Dromore local government by-election for Banbridge District Council which took place on 13 February 2008 with its candidate being Dromore solicitor, Keith Harbinson. He took 19.5% of the first preference votes cast.
TUV was the last party to be eliminated, and more of its votes transferred to the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) than to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), enabling the former to retain its seat.
At a Craigavon Borough Council local by-election in Lurgan on 14 January 2010, the TUV candidate won 19.3% of first preference votes. The UUP candidate, Jo-Anne Dobson, won with 63.9%. The DUP did not contest the seat.
2009 European Parliament election