• Education

    DUP conference: Paul Givan goes on the attack – accusing the TUV of offering no strategy and promoting ‘myths’ about Stormont

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    By David Thompson

    Copyright northernirelandworld

    DUP conference: Paul Givan goes on the attack - accusing the TUV of offering no strategy and promoting 'myths' about Stormont

    The DUP education minister has admitted that there is an “attraction” to the TUV message within the unionist community – but claimed voters “are smart enough to see that it’s not a solution”.

    Addressing his party’s annual conference, Mr Givan compared the situation to when his party “eclipsed the UUP” as the leading voice of unionism twenty years ago.

    The TUV hit back at the comments, accusing the DUP man of forgetting that many of his DUP colleagues “owe their seats in Stormont to TUV transfers”.

    A spokesperson said their rivals are “happy to rely on TUV voters when it suits them, but attacks us when we hold them to account” – accusing the party of driving a car “running on Sinn Fein green diesel”.

    During his speech, Paul Givan said he would dismantle three of the TUV’s “most persistent myths”. Firstly, that collapsing the Stormont institutions would fix the Irish Sea border issue. He said that if that didn’t work when unionism held influence in Westminster, it isn’t going to work with a Labour Party that does not seek a single vote in Northern Ireland and faces challenges on every front.

    Secondly, he said the “myth” that a better form of devolution without Sinn Fein is possible had no credibility “given the electoral arithmetic in the Assembly”.

    Thirdly, the Lagan Valley MLA rejected the idea that direct rule would be a better alternative.

    “That’s the Westminster Parliament that brought us liberal abortion laws in Northern Ireland, same sex marriage, Irish language legislation and the Northern Ireland Protocol – and those were all under a sympathetic Conservative administration.

    “And I would caution anyone who thinks at the next election the cavalry will come over the hill to solve our problems. I’ve seen that movie before and it didn’t end well”, he said.

    There was also criticism of Sinn Fein and the Alliance Party, the latter he said had been reinvented by Naomi Long “not as a bridge between communities, but as a champion of radical social agendas that most people never voted for and don’t support”.

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