THE prospects of a unionist pact for next year's Stormont election appear remote with only the TUV so far voicing public support for formalised cooperation.
The DUP's Alex Easton earlier this month urged pro-union parties to campaign together ahead of the May 2022 assembly poll.
The North Down MLA warned that without cooperation between unionism's three main parties "it will be difficult to remove the NI Protocol”.
He suggested a pact would be needed “to not run too many candidates, shredding the vote, and ensuring unionism transfers its votes between unionism and no other parties”.
There are currently 40 MLAs in the assembly's unionist bloc, leaving it six representatives short of a majority.
Without a significant swing towards unionism at the next Stormont election, it would appear unlikely there would be enough votes to remove the Irish Sea border when it can go to a vote in three years' time.
However, Mr Easton's call has gained little traction among his DUP colleagues or the Ulster Unionists.
While there has been no official response to the remarks from DUP headquarters, a party source indicated that the proposal had been given little consideration at leadership level.
Concerns centre on the practical difficulties of forging a pan-unionist alliance in an election that uses proportional representation, as well as the potential for a pact to discourage moderate unionist voters.
"An assembly election is very different from a Westminster election where the parties can coalesce behind a single candidate. Withdrawing candidates in a PR election is counter-productive," the source said.
"I think we could describe this idea as dead in the water."
Ulster Unionist leader Steve Aiken has also signalled his reluctance to commit to any form of pan-unionist cooperation, previously urging voters to simply transfer to parties who "believe in the union".
Mr Aiken originally said the UUP would run in all 18 constituencies in the 2019 Westminster election but did not put a candidate forward in North Belfast where DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds was subsequently unseated.
A TUV spokesperson said the party would be encouraging voters to transfer to other parties that "take a clear position of opposition to the protocol in order to maximise the pro-union/anti-protocol voice in the assembly".
"The vote cannot be split in a PR election so by offering people across the country the opportunity to vote TUV 1 and then transfer down the line to other parties which want to see the protocol gone we will maximise the vote," the spokesperson said.
Politics lecturer and Slugger O'Toole deputy editor David McCann said there was already good transfer patterns among unionist parties but that could be undermined by a pact.
"Lumping all the unionist candidates together is unlikely to attract any additional votes from committed unionists but there's every prospect that it would drive more moderate unionists towards the Alliance and the Greens," he said.
