Letter: DUP’s two-year boycott of the Northern Ireland Assembly has delivered little real change

The deal protects NI-GB trade, and includes a welcome UK-wide labelling requirement but, crucially, GB-NI trade will still be on a more disadvantageous footing than intra-GB trade.

It is unclear how the proposed UK internal market system is better than the Windsor Framework’s ‘green lane’ and the proposed East-West Council will surely only ever be a talking shop.

The flaw in the DUP’s strategy, and the one that those opposing their return to Stormont seem to insist on continuing, was to try to strong-arm Westminster into altering a bilateral treaty.

Fundamental change to the NI Protocol is contingent on UK-EU cooperation and unionism can best contribute to this from inside an executive.

Therefore, the most apt verdict on the DUP’s boycott is that it has delivered little real change, change that could surely have been achieved from inside an executive, whilst simultaneously undermining the stability and effectiveness of the very state it seeks to preserve.

Marcus Gamble, Tandragee