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While I know that parties in NI have to self-identify as either "nationalists" or "unionists", it is unclear to me why this would have forbidden the entry of mainstream UK parties. In fact, I have read that the Tories indeed have run for elections there in the past few years only, just with little support. So why are mainstream UK parties absent in NI?
It looks like I might have missed something fairly basic, but I could not figure out what.
Northern Ireland, like the rest of the UK uses the First Past The Post (FPTP) system of elections. A well-established result of this system is the formation of two-party systems. This shouldn't be taken literally - it means that two main parties will form, and compete for majorities, while other parties are much smaller.
In such two-party systems, typically one political dimension will divide the two parties. A common dimension is the "Left/Right" division, as seen in most of the UK.
The elections at stake here are parliamentary seats. This is different from presidential systems, as the two main parties that exists within one electoral district may not always align with the main national parties. This can be explained by the fact that the nationally separating dimension is locally less relevant.
In particular, it appears that the relevant dimension in NI is nationalist/unionist, and in Scotland it's similar. That's why NI has its own parties, and why the SNP has a majority in Scotland.
Why don't the main UK parties enter the NI elections? The problem is that their candidates would have to position themselves on the nationalist/unionist dimension, and they would not be as believable on that dimension as the existing NI parties. Locally, both Tories and Labour would be third parties in a two-party system.
Alliance Party has actually always been associated with the Liberal Democrats, and they're both members of Liberal International. The Liberal Democrats are basically a redundant choice because they're the same as Alliance, and Alliance have policies meaningful to local politics in Northern Ireland. It'd be very unlikely that either party or voters would feel the need to vote for Liberal Democrats to spite Alliance.
Labour is in a similar situation. The SDLP and PUP already exist; nationalist and unionist labour/democratic socialist politics respectively. There's no point fielding a Labour candidate because they'd have nothing unique to offer. The SDLP however do have a relationship with Labour, while the largely irrelevant PUP is tied closely with loyalist paramilitaries.
The same isn't true for the Conservatives, because they are regarded as a functionally different and moderate alternative to the TUV, DUP, UUP. Their full name of course is the Conservative and Unionist Party. Which puts them in a unique position of relevance to local unionist politics in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England.
It could be generalised that Alliance are a progressive non-sectarian and middle class option. Conservative are a traditional non-sectarian and middle class option. Working class politics in Northern Ireland is tribal, and so Labour wouldn't win anything. This also goes some way to explain why each side of the community has to have their own democratic socialist party... admittedly, that doesn't really make sense elsewhere.
