Battler with a mountain to climb to retain his Euro seat

Jim Allister admits a tendency towards not suffering fools gladly. He is not one for makovers or image consultants.

Being seen as strident, stern-faced, no-nonsense and finger-pointing is more a cause of content than concern.

And if it means being linked to the ‘chuckle’ regime at Stormont, he can live with impressions of a ‘humour by-pass’ as well.

“I do say things robustly,” he says. “We all have flaws, but it is for other people to say.”

As the MEP who kept his seat and left his party, Allister is the insider who is also an outsider — inside the complex institutions of the EU, but outside the ‘political loop’ now operating from Parliament Buildings.

And yet he stands more than an outside chance of causing a major upset on June 4 in what could be a close-run race for the third seat.

Though he accuses the Executive, Northern Ireland Office and most major media organisations of being “in cahoots” to ensure his defeat, there are growing indications the self-styled Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader will confound expectations.

And while there has been speculation the real TUV hope is that the ballot boxes produce enough of a bounce for the perhaps sooner-than-expected General Election as well as the next Assembly race, Allister denies his focus is on Ballyclare rather than Brussels.

Yet he has a butter mountain to climb if he is to retain his seat. The consensus among rival parties is that he will be consigned to the margins and forced to go the way of Bob McCartney.

The former UK Unionist Party leader got more than 20,000 votes, but in the last Assembly election, standing across six constituencies, he failed to get a seat.

Allister, of course, insists the mainstream consensus and the media, has got it wrong — as they did in the Dromore Valentine’s Day by-election which sent the DUP into a tailspin.

Born in Crossgar, Co Down, Allister was reared on a farm, handy in terms of agriculture, which is at the core of Ulster/EU relations, and now lives in Ballymena.

Educationally he attended Regent House in Newtownards before going on to study law at Queen’s University and became a QC by profession who has employed the mechanics of forensic advocacy and legal skills in his political style.

He is married to Ruth and they have three grown-up children.

Allister has twice resigned from the DUP, but insists he’s no quitter. For some voters, though, once can fit in with his theme of integrity and principles, but twice begins to look like carelessness.

The first row was in the aftermath of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and Allister spent some 15 years out of politics before being persuaded to come back to the helm. It worked well. Like long term predecessor Ian Paisley, he topped the poll and pushed up the DUP vote in 2004.

Then came the second split with Allister the only senior DUP figure to resign over the decision to go into government with Sinn Fein.

While a key slogan he uses is “nothing morally wrong can be politically right”, Allister denies he would have been on the higher moral ground to resign his seat in 2007 and fight as an independent.

He argues he followed the example of Jeffrey Donaldson, Arlene Foster and Peter Weir, who quit the Ulster Unionist Party for the DUP without putting themselves to the voters.

“They may not be the best moral compass, but they provided historical precedent,” Allister told the Belfast Telegraph.

His emphasis is on June 4 proving the first referendum on this Stormont administration and his indignation takes up half of his manifesto, even though he accepts Europe can do nothing to assist his desire to bring the regime down.

Belfast Telegraph