Northern Ireland Protocol remains threat to Union, Jim Allister says

TUV leader Jim Allister and loyalist activist Jamie Bryson addressed the latest in a series of anti-Northern Ireland Protocol meetings at Conlig Orange Hall in Bangor.

Both men are vocal opponents of the post-Brexit trading arrangements that created economic barriers on the movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

They are also critics of the DUP’s decision to agree a deal with the UK government on trade that saw the party drop its two-year blockade of powersharing and return to devolved government at Stormont earlier this year.

The DUP leadership said at the time the deal had effectively removed the trading border for goods moving from Great Britain to, and staying in, Northern Ireland.

But Mr Allister told the meeting that the DUP is now following a path which will lead to Irish unity.

He said: “Make no mistake, that is the goal of the protocol.

“By pushing the border from where it should be to the Irish Sea, the protocol achieved where the IRA failed.”

Mr Allister added: “Its means of achievement are equally obvious. The ultimate manifestation of Irish unity is Northern Ireland and the Republic ruled by precisely the same laws.

“That is what, under the protocol, we now have in terms of our goods economy and agri-food industry.

“The 300+ EU laws that govern these vital economic sectors – laws we can’t change – are exactly the same laws that apply in the Republic because they, as part of the EU, are subject to its governance and we, being treated as part of its customs union and single market, are equally subject to these laws.”

Mr Bryson told the meeting that the so-called Irish Sea trading border had not been removed by the DUP deal.

He said: “Anyone who simply read the regulations would understand that powers conferred to implement the protocol are never going to be, and could never be, used to disapply core components of the requirements imposed by those arrangements.”

He added: “The DUP once described EU law as the ‘fundamental issue’, now they have changed.

“EU law in itself is no longer an issue, let alone a fundamental one, but rather it is how EU law manifests itself is the DUP’s only concern.

“If it governs NI without creating GB-NI divergence, then the DUP are content with NI’s colony-like status.”

Mr Bryson predicted that the DUP’s deal with the government is falling apart.

He said: “It is inevitable because, try as they will, they can’t bring the unionist community with them.

“There is a sufficient number who will never implement and accept a border in the Irish Sea and we won’t be bought, bullied or silenced.”