Jim Allister QC: The appeal court has confirmed that the Northern Ireland Protocol dismantles the Union

To subjugate is to vanquish.

So, when the Court of Appeal settles on that description of what the Protocol does to Article 6 of the Acts of Union, there is little room for doubt or complacency about the dire constitutional consequences of the Protocol.

It is, as TUV has long said, Union dismantling.

When you then add to this the court’s ruling that the consent principle of the Belfast Agreement is not breached by that fundamental change to our constitutional relationship, then it is indisputably clear that the supposed ‘consent’ promised is fraudulent and a con.

If, in the words of McCloskey LJ the Protocol “positions Northern Ireland primarily within the EU internal market rather than that of the UK” while “perpetuating the application of a discrete and potentially evolving corpus of EU laws in NI”, then, there is no room for doubt as to the constitutional change which has been perfected, without consent.

Yet, according to the court, the consent principle in the Belfast Agreement of no relevance!

I doubt unionists who voted for the Belfast Agreement realised the supposed consent principle was a mirage, applicable only to the final hand over of the title deeds after the Union had been salami sliced out of existence!

The irrepressible message from the Court of Appeal judgement is that the protocol is indeed Union-dismantling and that the consent principle is a fraud and a deceit.

Jim Allister QC, TUV leader, North Antrim MLA (and a party to the court challenge to the Northern Ireland Protocol)

Kate Hoey: The Belfast Agreement, with its fatal deception, is finished

Editorial: No wonder Baroness Hoey feels so betrayed by outworkings of 1998 Belfast deal

Owen Polley: Ukraine another excuse for government to do nothing about protocol

Ruth Dudley Edwards: Sinn Fein cannot erase its record of hostility towards Nato

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