Letter: I cannot understand how David McNarry considers that the Good Friday Agreement was a great improvement on the Anglo-Irish Agreement

I read David McNarry's letter (Persistent hypocritical interference by Ireland was rewarded by the UK government in 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, November 14) with interest, and agree with much of what he said.

However, I cannot understand how he considers that the Good Friday Agreement was a great improvement on the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Its much vaunted 'Principle of Consent' requirement on NI's constitutional status has, when tested in court, been shown to be very limited indeed. It only applies to the final handover of British control. Our laws can be aligned with those in the Irish Republic without unionist consent being either asked for, or given, and the Good Friday Agreement's consent principle has not been violated. Clearly, this guarantee, no matter how reasonable it looked at first sight, was a gigantic confidence trick, which, coming from Tony (Weapons of Mass Destruction) Blair, is only to be expected.

Worse still, the current Irish Sea border (Windsor Framework) arrangements leave NI in a much worse position than it was under the hated Anglo Irish Agreement of 1985. Back then, although the Irish state was permitted to interfere in our affairs, we still had free and unfettered trading access to the rest of the UK. Under the current arrangements we don't, and the presence of the two larger Unionist parties in Stormont gives a quasi - democratic cover for this outrageous denial of basic democratic rights. This is leading to, and continues to lead to, a position where our laws increasingly align with those in the Irish Republic, thus making the British Union increasingly irrelevant, and because it has become pointless, this greatly increases the chance of the British Union being voted away.

So what is to be done? I fear Mr McNarry is being rather naive if he thinks that the DUP will lead any resistance to the present arrangements. They decided to go into power sharing with IRA/Sinn Fein in the certain knowledge that this will require them to operate the Protocol that is systematically detaching NI from the rest of the UK. Oh they protest about the protocol's impositions, but as they are an integral part of the government that operates the Protocol, their protests are understandably ignored.

No, if Mr McNarry wants to have a collective voice against the protocol - and it is a laudable aspiration - it might be better if he organised a meeting of concerned members of the broad pro-Union community to ascertain if a united pro-Union strategy can be achieved. I would give it my backing and I am not alone,

Tom Ferguson, Ballymoney