Election 2024: Sammy Wilson on North Antrim's Ian Paisley

Transcript

00:00What about two seats that I'm particularly interested in, North Antrim and South Antrim?

00:04How big a bite in North Antrim do you think the TUV is going to take out of Mr Paisley's majority?

00:10Well, I mean, I think that first of all

00:12having stood against Ian Paisley on a number of occasions and lost,

00:16Jim Alastair knows that all he can do is dent the majority, he's not going to win the seat.

00:22But of course you always want to maximise your vote. At the end of the day

00:27it's whether you win by a thousand or whether you win by ten thousand, the seat is still held by your party.

00:34And I suppose once the election's over people forget what the majority was and just who the winner was.

00:39In East Antrim, I think it'll be the same.

00:41And what about South Antrim? I mean people are talking about potentially Robin Swann

00:48having it his way there.

00:50Well, I mean again, I haven't followed the canvassing too closely in South Antrim.

00:56The one thing I do know is that name recognition in this game is very important and obviously having been Health Minister,

01:03Robin Swann has name recognition.

01:06This seat has swung between ourselves and us for unions on a number of occasions.

01:12Paul Gervan's a good candidate and I think that that one will probably be close to call.

01:19The one thing that I do know is that

01:22Robin Swann has

01:25not shone as Health Minister since the

01:30Assembly opened again, and that may well

01:33be a factor in people's minds.

01:35Is he simply flying from a job that he hasn't done very well?

01:41Therefore they'll not go and reward him.