The fall of Ian Paisley junior and the house of Paisley
The Westminster general election result in North Antrim brought to mind a modern take on an Irish bull: if Ian Paisley senior were alive today he’d be turning in his grave.
Irish bulls, as Irish Times readers well know, are ludicrous statements first attributed to the 18th century Irish parliamentarian Sir Boyle Roche, with his expressions such as querying what had posterity ever done for him, and how he couldn’t be in two places at one time as he wasn’t a bird.
Irish bulls make no sense and it can be difficult to make sense of the result in North Antrim where Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister overturned 54 years of the Paisley dynasty by defeating 57-year-old Ian Paisley junior by 450 votes. Politicians are prone to hyperbole but it was no exaggeration when Allister described the result as a “political earthquake of seismic proportions”.
There always was the possibility that the DUP could lose three seats, as it did, but North Antrim wasn’t on any pundit list. East Belfast was expected to be the big story but DUP leader Gavin Robinson held on there, providing some stability to a listing DUP ship. Ian junior was the big story.
Paisley senior first took North Antrim in a UK general election in 1970 and in 17 subsequent elections, whether for Westminster, different assemblies, a convention and a forum, he cruised to victory, a couple of times with majorities of more than 30,000.
When Paisley gifted the seat to his son in 2010 it seemed his for as long as he wanted it, junior also winning comfortably in 2017 and 2019. No one contemplated that Allister would topple the dynasty.
Jim Allister and his TUV supporters celebrate winning the North Antrim seat. Photograph: Stephen Davison
With the ban on double-jobbing, what is the Stormont Assembly’s loss is now the House of Commons’s gain. Allister may end up sitting on the green benches at Westminster close to Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK with whom the TUV had an alliance of sorts.
It will be fascinating to observe what fellow MPs and London sketch-writers and cartoonists make of the TUV leader’s contemptuous demeanour and versatility in withering put-downs.
Allister was mildly compassionate in victory, allowing it was “not an easy moment” for Paisley while quickly following up that it was a “reality check” for the DUP.
But how to make some sense of such a vertiginous fall from grace. Allister had the best explanation. It was a “very clear indication that the unionist people of North Antrim will not be taken for granted,” he said.
Over the years Paisley was involved in a series of controversies that just might have convinced a sufficient number of North Antrim voters to decide to teach him a galling lesson. These included lobbying for a local property developer and enjoying luxury expenses-paid holidays in Sri Lanka and the Maldives.
The Sri Lanka trip resulted in his suspension for 30 sitting days from the House of Commons. A petition was organised, which, if it had been signed by 10 per cent of the North Antrim electorate, would have seen him ousted as an MP and a byelection called. That petition fell just short by about 450 names.
North Antrim is the heart of Northern Ireland’s bible belt and it seems many voters felt that Paisley junior’s lifestyle was not in accordance with that expected of a Free Presbyterian MP and was contrary to the standards set by his dad, the leader and founder of that fundamentalist church.
Losing North Antrim was a humiliating blow to the unseated MP, to the Paisley family, and to the DUP. In his long life, it is a hit that Ian Paisley senior never could have foreseen.
But Ian Paisley junior may not be going away, you know. “This certainly is not the script I would have written for tonight,” he said in the early hours of Friday morning. Still, the Paisley bravado was evident to the last. “But life is made up of many chapters and I embrace the next chapter as happily as I have embraced the previous chapters.”
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