The Progressive Labour Party is not a split party, David Burt has insisted ahead of an election vote that will decide his future in politics.

As PLP delegates and MPs prepare to choose between Mr Burt and former finance minister Curtis Dickinson as leader, the Premier insisted the ruling party would unify.

“I do not believe there's a split inside the Progressive Labour Party. Anytime that you have an internal election process, there’ll be persons who support one particular candidate over another particular candidate.

“But after that, I can promise you that there is not a single member of the PLP that wants to see the PLP lose government.

“They want to make sure that the PLP vision carries on, and they will unify.

“No matter what the result is, if I'm not successful, my full support will go behind the leader of the party because that is what all MPs are committed to supporting, and all members — the leadership.”

He said: “I think that challenges internally are healthy ... the fact is the party’s not divided, so there is no split.”

However, the Premier said the PLP needed to come together after the leadership election.

Mr Burt said: “One of the things that I’ve learnt in my time as party leader is that you cannot just be punitive. You have to make sure that you have restorative practices.

“This is something that we’ve made sure the delegates of the party told us that we have to do, and that is something that we have implemented in our party as a whole, and it’s something that certainly is the best way to bring forward that unification process.

“So there is not a split in the party, but what is going to happen is that during any internal election process, there are going to be challenges, and to bring about that unity, you can do it through a punitive process or you can do it through a restorative process.

“The party has committed and upgraded its mechanisms internally to have more of a restorative process, and that’s what we’re going to have inside of our parliamentary group because it’s vital to have all persons working and pulling in the same direction, in line with our platform.”

The Premier said there was no ill feeling between himself and Mr Dickinson.

This despite Mr Dickinson quitting as finance minister just days before the Budget in February owing to clashes with Mr Burt over the level of taxpayer-funded sweeteners being offered to the developer of the $376 million Fairmont Southampton hotel.

Mr Burt said: “I would not characterise it as animosity at all. I have a tremendous amount of personal respect for Curtis Dickinson.

“We shared a few laughs before the debate; we shared a few laughs after the debate.

“I like Curtis as a person. I don’t carry personal animosity towards persons inside of my party.

“There are always difficult things that may happen internally, but I happen to focus on policy differences, and those different types of approaches. But personal animosity, absolutely not.”