Samuel Morrison: ​Rather than asking for clarity about the Windsor deal on Northern Ireland, the DUP should provide it

Take for example two articles 24 hours apart from the former DUP leader, former First Minister Arlene, now Baroness, Foster – who is also a member of the DUP Windsor Framework panel member which is soon to report its findings (see links below).

Writing in The Express in an article published on March 23 Baroness Foster said much with which I agree. She wrote that: "It is plain as the nose on your face that the Windsor Agreement was oversold," pointed out that "we were told by the PM that the Irish sea border has gone – it clearly hasn’t" and observed: "The Stormont Brake is not a veto, no matter what the hapless NI Secretary of State says. The current version is an attempt to put a veneer of consent on the fact that European law will still apply in my part of the UK.”

I was pleased to see that the message from hauliers – who know more about this than any of us – was cutting through with Baroness Foster observing: "One of the hauliers in NI has described the green lane under the Windsor Framework as not really green but pink, ie. a lighter version of the red lane! And what about those manufacturers in NI who only serve the UK market – do they have to abide by EU rules?

In moving towards her concluding comments Baroness Foster said: "The prospect of devolution coming back looks narrower after Wednesday’s vote, which I regret ... But rather than the pressure being on the DUP the pressure should be on the Prime Minister to deal with the outstanding issues".

But then one discovers that on March 24, the very next day, Baroness Foster penned an article with a radically different tone for the Daily Telegraph. The piece was headlined, ‘Rishi Sunak can still bring the DUP round to his Protocol plans’ and while I appreciate that the one who penned the main body of an article seldom writes the headline, it is undeniable that the headline in this instance is a fair summation of Baroness Foster's position in the article.

She opened by saying: "Much of the analysis around the Democratic Unionist Party’s (DUP) views on the Windsor Framework is misleading at best. While the party did not vote for Rishi Sunak’s motion on Wednesday, it is simply not true that it opposed his plans outright."

Baroness Foster told Telegraph readers that the truth was that "the DUP has been open to Mr Sunak’s proposals". No talk here, in a piece appearing a mere day after her first, of hauliers in Northern Ireland seeing no real green lane in the proposals. Rather this Baroness Foster was at pains to tell her readers that: "The DUP’s outstanding complaints need not torpedo the Framework. They are about the need for clarification in some key areas. If these clarifications are made, either in UK law or through some other domestic mechanism, then there is still a pathway for restoring Stormont."

Baroness Foster goes on to say a number of times in her Telegraph article that DUP concerns can be addressed in legislation by the government. This misses the fact that the legislation governing the so-called ‘Green Lane’ is not UK law but EU legislation. It misses the fact that nothing in purely UK law will change the fact that Northern Ireland has been left behind in the EU customs union and single market. It misses the fact that when it comes to vast swathes of our economy our laws are made not in Belfast nor in London but in Brussels.

It misses the fact when it comes to those laws, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was so keen to remind us on the day the framework was unveiled to much fanfare, the European Court of Justice "remains the sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law and ... will have the final say on EU law and single market issues" in Northern Ireland.

Baroness Foster suggests that the DUP concerns about Article Six of the Acts of Union may be addressed in domestic legislation through "a de facto harmonisation of trade between GB and NI, and therefore fulfilling Article 6 in a roundabout way”.She goes on to say that it would be helpful to have these so-called safeguards in law. This fundamentally misunderstands the situation. The core of the issue is that EU law, not British law, continues to apply to Northern Ireland, a situation which is unique within the UK. No ‘safeguards in law’ will address that reality. UK law is positively incapable of changing the fact that under the Protocol/Windsor Whitewash we remain a colony of the EU.

The fact that an article that seemed to play up the potential of the Windsor Framework could be articulated by Baroness Foster so soon after one that seemed dismissive of it reminds me of Mr Facing-both-ways, a character in John Bunyan's celebrated allegory Pilgrim's Progress who has the ability to adopt contradictory positions depending on who he is talking to.

Now is not a time for such an approach to politics but clarity that we as unionists remain united behind our solemn declaration of Ulster Day 2021 that "the Protocol must be rejected and replaced by arrangements which fully respect Northern Ireland’s position as a constituent and integral part of the United Kingdom”. Baroness Foster's article in the Express appeared to correctly identify that the repackaged protocol failed to deliver this.

• Samuel Morrison is a TUV candidate in Lagan River, ABC council

Arlene Foster Express March 23: Rishi sacrificed British sovereignty to EU bullies for a quiet life

Arlene Foster Daily Telegraph March 24: Rishi Sunak can still bring the DUP round to his Protocol plans