In 26 days, the polls will be open and Northern Ireland will elect 462 Councillors across 11 Councils.
After the last Council election, we were the largest party in 6 of the 11 Councils with 122 Councillors elected. Sinn Fein was the largest party in 5 Council areas.
In those republican dominated Councils, unionists have had a long four years where, often aided by the Alliance Party and the SDLP, there has been a steady removal of any semblance of Britishness. Those Sinn Fein dominated Councils have also been at the fore of squandering rates on their pet projects such as Irish language signs whilst at the same time often failing to deliver the basic services for ratepayers such as swimming lessons or bin collections.
In just over three weeks as we go to the polls, we have a duty to remind our family, neighbours and friends that a shredded unionist vote will not strengthen Northern Ireland but rather it will deliver more Sinn Fein controlled Councils and a further erosion of Britishness in Local Government.
In this election, our slogan is Moving Forward Together because Northern Ireland must move forward together and so must unionism.
Just last year in North Antrim during the Assembly election, a DUP seat was lost to a non-unionist not because there were too few unionist votes, but because the votes were shredded between too many unionist candidates.
Northern Ireland needs unionism to stop dividing and start moving forward together. That’s what I am committed to. Encouragingly in many areas people are uniting behind the DUP and people are joining our ranks from all shades of unionism.
