Jim Allister: Audacious letter from five former Ulster Unionist politicians calls for voters to back DUP-UUP roll-over on Irish Sea border

Last Saturday’s letter from five former UUP members demanding only protocol implementers should be offered as candidates in the Westminster election was as audacious as it was misguided (‘Ulster Unionists in plea to leaders: The parties should field agreed candidates in the coming election,’ David McNarry, David Campbell, Jim Wilson, Lord Kilclooney and Bob Stoker, May 4)

Now that Northern Ireland, through the DUP/UUP rollover on the protocol, is subject to the double detriment of EU rule and Sinn Fein rule, it is unimaginable that unionists who dissent from such folly should be left with no one to vote for.

The consequence would be a drastic fall in the unionist vote.

If Mr McNarry and co think unionists who still oppose the Union-dismantling protocol should nonetheless vote for protocol implementers, then they are seriously deluded.

Sadly, my party’s offer of a voting arrangement for the general election was tersely rejected.

The dividers of unionism are those who tore up the agreed unionist platform, namely, the united declaration of September 28 2021, signed by all unionist party leaders, of an “unalterable position” of rejection of the protocol, its mechanisms and structures.

That is where my party, now along with Reform UK, still stands.

It is those who somersaulted into protocol implementers who have brought division.

Jim Allister KC MLA, TUV Leader