DUP is acquiescing in a Brexit deal that experts say does huge damage to Union

What exactly is the point of devolution and/or the DUP?

On the DUP’s watch ... abortion, same sex Marriage, Westminster legislating over the assembly, a border in the Irish Sea, Irish language legislation, lost the unionist majority at assembly, Westminster and EU level whilst Sinn Fein retain the ability to collapse Assembly at any time and block its return.

Three prominent legal experts recently gave evidence to the EU Scrutiny Committee in Westminster stating that the Withdrawal Agreement ties the whole UK to EU state aid rules via the Northern Ireland Protocol:

Professor Stephen Weatherill from the Oxford Law Faculty variously stated “what the Protocol says is not what it does — what it does is not to treat Northern Ireland as part of the customs territory of the UK. It treats Northern Ireland as part of the EU’s customs territory ... the Irish Sea becomes a border with high customs and regulatory significance. It separates a jurisdiction, NI, which shares the regulatory features ... with the EU, and a jurisdiction, GB, which has largely ... separated itself from the EU’s rules ... the key to understanding this is that the Protocol is written to mislead. The Protocol asserts that trade from NI to GB shall be unfettered, & more generally it asserts an intent to protect the UK’s internal market (Article 6). But the reality is different.”

Whilst George Peretz QC has said “...it is perhaps concerning that the current government felt free to enter into such an agreement despite the fact that the Parliament of the day had passed legislation prohibiting it from doing so ... by entering into the Withdrawal Agreement, the current government infringed the prohibition set out in section 55 of the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018 ... the Protocol in fact places NI in the EU customs territory, as ‘customs territory’ is defined for the purposes of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade.”

Martin Howe QC meanwhile warns the Withdrawal Agreement “the Protocol cuts across the Articles of Union ... citizens of Northern Ireland plainly under this Protocol (which is ‘a treaty with a foreign power’) will not — ‘have the same privileges, and be on the same footing’ as citizens in the rest of the UK ... [and] It can be seen that the preservation of freedom of trade within the UK’s own single market is a fundamental constitutional principle upon which the Union was founded. It was embedded both within the original articles of Union ...The application within NI of these areas of EU law will over time have increasingly severe adverse consequences for the integrity of the United Kingdom internal market, for NI’s place in the Union”

Similar comments have been made by Simon Hoare (Conservative Chair of Northern Ireland Select Committee) “there are fundamental questions about the long term viability of the political union of the UK with the protocol in place...doing as it does...creating effectively a trading border within the UK single market.”

The Withdrawal Agreement pokes a hole in the Union and gives succour to the SNP.

It is worth noting that Article 16 of the protocol allows the UK to “unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures” in the event that the protocol leads to “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties” or to “diversion of trade”.

Why have the DUP raised the white flag?

Alan Day, Coagh

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