Jim Allister: The unaltered Protocol's sovereignty grab over Northern Ireland is its greatest offence

Protocol is a sovereignty grab over NI

For unionists the constitutional issue must trump everything, else we aren’t unionists at all.

The political and economic union of the United Kingdom rests on the Act(s) of Union.

The political union is splintered when lawmaking powers for one part of the UK are surrendered to a foreign power (the EU). The economic union is shafted when trade between and within the UK is fettered and subservience to the EU Customs Code requires Great Britain to be treated as a third/foreign country, thus necessitating a partitioning border in the Irish Sea.

This is the reality of the unaltered Protocol. Its sovereignty grab over Northern Ireland is its greatest offence.

In constitutional terms NI is now a condominium of the UK and EU, with lawmaking powers shared by surrender of all laws covering our goods economy to the EU - laws we don’t make and can’t change!

The fact that those economic laws are identical in source and content as those in the Republic of Ireland adds the inevitable fusion dimension intended by the Protocol.

I challenge any unionist seeking to return to Stormont to implement these arrangements to show where, in law and constitutional reality, I am wrong.

Jim Allister KC MLA, TUV leader, North Antrim