Power-sharing system flawed, TUV

Jim Allister has thrown down a challenge to the DUP

The Traditional Voice Unionist MEP Jim Allister has challenged the DUP to tell Gordon Brown that power-sharing in Northern Ireland is not working.

He told his party's first annual conference Peter Robinson should tell the prime minister mandatory coalition with Sinn Fein was irredeemably flawed.

Mr Allister said the present system meant no-one could be voted out and "you can never get rid of them".

The TUV leader said it could not be allowed to continue.

"Can you think of the lunacy in the United States if McCain had been able to say to Obama, 'Never mind the fact that you won this election, I'll be joint president'.

"That's what mandatory coalition means, that everyone is in government as of right forever," he said.

"You can never vote them out, you can never get rid of them and they can play fast and loose as Sinn Fein have been doing, as long as they like, with good government, and give you woeful government.

"Now that cannot go on."