TUV conference: We won't equivocate on the Northern Ireland Protocol unlike others, Jim Allister tells his party

​Speaking to the TUV conference in Cookstown on Saturday, Mr Allister said that Rishi Sunak’s deal to reform the Northern Ireland Protocol had not removed the essence of the trade frontier.

Mr Allister in his keynote address, while he barely mentioned the DUP by name, more than once implied that the rival unionist party had been weak in its response to the new agreement.

In a speech that was repeatedly interrupted by applause, Mr Allister said that “while others have dithered and equivocated and wondered if they could even present the Windsor Framework as the Windsor Park Framework, TUV was clear: there are no changes of substance only tinkering. Nor could there be, because the legal confines within which the Windsor Whitewash was mixed expressly prohibits changes affecting the ‘essential elements’ of the protocol.”

In a stinging reference to the DUP’s decision to appoint a panel that will consult views on the protocol deal, Mr Allister said: “When you are abandoned to a foreign Customs Code that decrees GB a foreign country and put under foreign laws and court, then, no unionist leader should need a panel to consult on the acceptability of such hostile annexation”.

Mr Allister said that “despite the exaggerated oversell of the prime minister, nothing that matters has changed in the Union-dismantling protocol: the EU’s ill-gotten sovereignty has not been recovered, Article Six [of the Acts of Union, which guarantees unfettered trade] remains suspended, ECJ still rules, Irish Sea Border stays and Northern Ireland is still colonised by EU diktat. Sunak’s snake oil cures nothing.

“Even his much vaunted Stormont Brake is a fake.”

Mr Allister said that “to accept the Windsor Framework is to accept that never again will Northern Ireland be a full part of the UK, part of a country that makes its own laws, but instead on a trajectory to Irish unity through dynamic economic alignment with the Republic, tied into the same single market, under the same customs code, governed by the same laws, overseen by the same court, while GB diverges and the gulf widens as we are pushed out of our own nation.”

He said: “To those demanding a return to Stormont, let it be clearly understood that the unavoidable price of such is to implement the Union-dismantling protocol, to become protocol slaves and Irish Sea border officers. The High Court in Rooney-v-Poots could not have been clearer. If there is an executive its ministers must by law implement the protocol and its Irish Sea border. A Vichy Stormont for protocol collaborators.”

Mr Allister said: “No doubt unionism is heading into tricky waters, but resolution and principle are key to their navigation. Already Doug Beattie has jumped ship to advocate Stormont operation of the very protocol he pledged to unalterably oppose. Stand by for threats and inducements to coerce unionism back into protocol-implementing Stormont. A tight budget is the start to aid orchestrated demands from sectors affected by cuts, to be followed by the hint and offers of a financial bung if only unionists would re-establish Stormont and enforce the protocol.”

Mr Allister said: “To accept the Windsor Whitewash is also to win the booby prize of a Sinn Fein First Minister. No thanks. TUV is clear, she who says there was ‘no alternative’ to the murder of our kith and kin, and thereby justifies every cruel, wicked IRA murder, is not fit and cannot be made fit to be first minister. TUV is not in the business of facilitating, but rather opposing, Sinn Fein rule. However others may toady and cosy to Sinn Fein, TUV will withstand such. We are not in the business of taking the knee to either EU or Sinn Fein rule. And, let me be very clear, that if this is the only type of Stormont available, then, we’d be better without it ... Toxic Sinn Fein rule or imperfect British rule – TUV has no difficulty making the choice!”

He said: “It was by voting TUV in their tens of thousands last May that grassroots unionists put strength into the DUP’s stance. There are 65,000 for the transition from building the Poots Posts to opposing them. There are signs, however, that injection of strength is wearing off, signs of wobble are evident. So, come 18th May let us increase the dose and again inject strength into the body politic of unionism.”

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