UKIP NI councillor Henry Reilly remains UKIP councillor despite suspension from internal party activities for 3 months

UKIP's first councillor in Northern Ireland, Henry Reilly, has been suspended from internal party activities for 3 months over a spat with the party's leader in NI, David McNarry MLA.

Reilly is an extremely popular councillor in Northern Ireland both in UKIP and the wider unionist community but he and McNarry haven't seen eye to eye for some time. The current disagreement seems to revolve around Reilly being prevented from appointing spokesmen for the NI party and the subsequent publicising of his suspension by McNarry following which Reilly accused him of bringing the party into disrepute.

As we understand it, Cllr Reilly remains a full and active member of UKIP and continues to sit as a UKIP councillor but is currently prevented from taking part in internal party matters whilst head office try to make some sense of what is happening over there.

UKIP NI Cllr Henry Reilly re-elected

Congratulations to UKIP's Cllr Henry Reilly who has been re-elected in the Mournes.

Not only did Henry secure re-election, he came top of the list for the ward with 1,964 first preference votes. Henry is also UKIP's candidate for Northern Ireland in the EU election.

Elections in Northern Ireland are conducted under the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system where candidates are ranked in order of preference and the least popular candidates are eliminated in a series of rounds based on first preference, second preference, third preference, etc. It's almost impossible to predict without seeing the ballot papers and having a really good memory because the lowest scoring survivor from one round can be the highest scoring in the next.