Jim Allister: I say to DUP — as the lead unionist party you must thwart the Northern Ireland protocol

Today is January 1, which is 220 years from the activation of the Act of Union.

Article 6 of the Act of Union was the fundamental building block and foundation of the Union. It was to the effect that there would be free and frictionless trade across and within the entirety of the United Kingdom, from which every citizen could benefit.

Sadly, on this January 1, article 6 of the Act of Union will be trashed by the protocol, which creates friction in trade within the United Kingdom and causes the creation of an Irish Sea border to aid that friction.

Of course, that brings with it the odious imposition of laws that we never made, that we cannot change and that will be supervised by a foreign court in a foreign jurisdiction.

Make no mistake about it: the protocol is a dire consequence for every citizen in Northern Ireland.

We will all live through its dire consequences. Therefore, we have to ask the question of how it arose.

Well, the truth is that it arose because nationalism, aided by their little helpers in the Alliance Party and some useful idiots in commerce, so baulked at the very thought of an extra camera on the land border that they pushed the border to the Irish Sea.

Some — Doug Beattie used the word in this week’s Stormont debate on the Brexit deal — will now “salivate” at the consequences. They do not care about the consequences for the people of Northern Ireland.

Rather, they see it as an advance towards partitioning the United Kingdom and unifying the island of Ireland economically. That is why they salivate, but it is the people of Northern Ireland who will suffer immensely in consequence of that.

That congregation will be those who will wring their hands, lament and pretend that they are upset that their citizens cannot readily access goods through Amazon or any of the other suppliers or that their companies cannot readily import.

They will say, “How terrible”, but they are the originators.

It is they, who egged it on in Stormont and who had to see it done and who will now impose that price on us all.

My other sadness about this is that the DUP is a party that knows the issues, although the Irish Sea border is the product of the betrayal of Brexit.

Let me say, this is not the Brexit that I voted for. My ballot paper did not ask, “Do you want GB to leave the EU and leave Northern Ireland behind, abandoned in the EU’s customs union, single market and VAT regime?”.

No, it invited me to vote to leave as we joined, as one nation. One of my great sadnesses is that, although the Irish Sea border is being delivered by the betrayal of Brexit, it is a DUP minister who is building the infrastructure.

Although the DUP in Westminster this week voted in principle and correctly against the deal, in Stormont it has been voting to implement the protocol.

I say this to the DUP, pretty directly: there is a huge onus upon you to ensure that the ambition of this protocol, of building an all-Ireland economy, is thwarted at every turn.

You have heard it this week; that is the ambition.

It is self-evident; it always was the price for Europe to sacrifice Northern Ireland.

As the lead party of unionism in the government, the burden upon you is immense to make sure that, at every turn, in every small and every large measure you utterly thwart the building of an all-Ireland economy, because you know and I know what the next step is.

Jim Allister QC MLA, Stormont

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