TUV keeps pressure on over Windsor Framework saying it means giving up on NI's place in the UK

​The TUV leader issued the statement just as he was set to speak to party members in Ballymoney, Co Antrim.

Whilst other unionists have stated that more time is needed to digest the full implications of the deal, Mr Allister has dismissed it for failing to address constitutional concerns.

“It is a sobering reality that the Windsor deal, which commits us to economic alignment with the Republic – same single market, same laws, same customs rules – means Northern Ireland will never again be a full part of the UK subject only to laws made in our own country.

“That is the Union-dismantling prospect that any unionist minded to accept the Windsor Whitewash is embracing.

“This deal does not recover the EU’s ill-gotten sovereignty over Northern Ireland.

"It still abandons us to the EU/Republic of Ireland economic orbit and laws.

"As Great Britain diverges this builds an all-Ireland by stealth. It is a framework alright, but not one to bind us to the UK – quite the reverse.

“The great and the good will urge compliant acceptance of this detachment from the UK but any unionist who values their heritage and place within the United Kingdom will reject it – and it won’t take a committee of eight [of the kind convened by the DUP] or any other number to explain it to them.

"Nor, should anyone be hoodwinked by the politics of pretence..

“It is stark and it is clear: accepts this deal and you accept transition out of the UK. Nothing could be surer.”

The DUP’s eight-strong panel is set to report by the end of March.

It is made up of shipping businessman Ross Reed, lawyer John McBurney, ex-DUP leaders Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster, DUP MP Carla Lockhart, DUP MLAs Brian Kingston and Deborah Erskine, and Peter Weir, the former DUP education minister who has sat in the House of Lords since last year.