Letter: Does blame for unionist disunity really rest with those who have told the truth about Irish Sea border?

In a letter of April 23, Mr Frank McClintock engages in a rather extraordinary promotion of a patently unsustainable narrative (Nationalists must laugh at the unionist divisions).

He criticises me, Jim Allister and Reform UK for consistently saying “no” to the Irish Sea border. One is not sure how saying no to the Irish Sea border is a valid “criticism”; rather it ought to be a fundamental requirement for all unionists, indeed it was once the pledge that united all of unionism. Neither Jim Allister nor I have deviated from that pledge.

This intellectual incoherence is then confused further when Mr McClintock appears to suggest only DUP MPs can oppose the protocol. In case he hasn’t noticed, it is the DUP who are now the chief implementers of the protocol, indeed only last week the joint first minister joined with Sinn Fein to table a motion to accept EU law on pet food.

In addition, it is the DUP leadership who claim the Irish Sea border no longer exists and, amongst other things, told everyone there would be “zero checks and zero customs paperwork” on goods destined for NI. Both of these claims, and the majority of others made by the DUP leadership, are patently false and this was obvious to anyone with even an elementary understanding of these issues.

Perhaps Mr McClintock can enlighten readers by setting out where he feels the point of unity can be between the arsonist and the fireman; or put another way, between those who say the Irish Sea border no longer exists, and those who wish to continue opposing it?

In thinking this through, Mr McClintock will have to consider where the point of unity can be found between the truth and lie, and in doing so, if he logically concludes there can be no such rational point of unity, then he will have to attribute blame for this disunity to either those who have told the truth, or those who have told lies.

If in the final analysis Mr McClintock decides that the blame lies with those who have told the truth (as his article by implication suggests), then that conclusively exposes the fallacy which underpins his letter.

Jamie Bryson, NI director of policy, Centre for the Union