It is now time for a united unionist approach in favour of invoking Article 16 to resolve the chaos caused by the Irish Sea border

On January 7, this newspaper agreed with Jim Allister MLA and the Ulster Unionist Party leader Steve Aiken that Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Prototcol should be invoked (see link below).

The article says that if applying the protocol (which created the Irish Sea border) leads to “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade, the EU or UK may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures”.

Our editorial was published the day after a poor appearance on BBC radio by the secretary of state, Brandon Lewis, who repeated the nonsense that the internal UK frontier merely extended existing “phytosanitary checks”.

Anyone who was paying attention at the time of the Boris betrayal, in October 2019, knew it was far more than that.

All manufactured goods coming to or from Northern Ireland, not just a tiny fraction of food or animal stocks, are in the EU single market.

By January 7, the scale of the Irish Sea border was already emerging. The position has worsened since then.

We acknowledged that invoking Article 16 was a radical step. EU apologists said it wasn’t feasible.

Now the EU has invoked it to stop theoretical EU-GB-NI vaccine movements (by late last night, after the print edition had gone to bed, Brussels had retreated from this course of action).

The prime minister recently told DUP MPs he would invoke Article 16 if needed as a result of the chaos caused by the Irish Sea border.

Now, with the barrier to military movements and the EU showing its willingness to use of Art 16 for reasons far less justified than the UK can cite, all unionists should hold Mr Johnson to his pledge. We applaud Arlene Foster, Steve Aiken and Jim Allister for last night doing just that.

• Editorial January 7: Unionists have good reason to call for Article 16 to be invoked

• Ben Lowry: At last, clear reason for UK and unionists to stop being weak towards Ireland and the EU

• Nigel Dodds: Westminster must stand up to Brussels to help NI

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