The TUV tries to broaden

For most of its short history the TUV has been very much a one-man-band, but buoyed by its dramatic humbling of the DUP in the recent European Parliament election, it has obviously started to think about the next sets of elections.

The problem is, of course, that while a one-man-band may be all you need for the European Parliament election where no party is ever going to get more than one candidate elected, it is clearly an inadequate strategy for the upcoming Westminster election, and especially inadequate for the Assembly elections in 2011.

So the TUV has started to introduce other faces into the public arena. Where once all public statements came from the mouth of Jim Allister, the TUV is now adopting the DUP's trick of sharing its press releases out between its active members.

On 25 June Ivor McConnell, TUV Chairman, put his name to a press release (ironically to complain about the Review Committee's trip to Dublin – Ivor sees this as evidence of "Dublin interference", yet was happy to put his name to another press release two days later which deals with an exclusively Dublin-related matter!)

TUV vice-chair Keith Harbinson had a go on 26 June.

TUV Secretary Karen Boal had her turn on 25 June.

In none of the press releases was the named 'releaser' actually related to the subject matter – it seems to just be a ploy to get their names (rather than just Allister's) mentioned in the press. All of these names are, of course, well known – Harbinson was the author of the DUP's first humbling in Dromore in February 2008 – but it still only adds up to four active members. The TUV will have to broaden out a lot more if it is to stand any chance of actually gaining seats either in Westminster or the Assembly. If it fails to do that, it will fall back into obscurity as a minor irritation for the other unionist parties.