Letter: If DUP wants to go back to Stormont and implement the protocol, its leader should be honest about it

It seems that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and the team of liberals he has assembled around him are desperate to return to Stormont.

I would be surprised if anyone could name a substantial benefit accruing to unionism from 25 years of Belfast/St Andrews Agreement devolution. That said, for the DUP to return to Stormont is only to strengthen the hand of those who are enemies of unionism. It elevates IRA/SF to the top of government and helps sanitise an organisation that should be treated as the terrorist pariahs they are.

Further a return to Stormont requires unionists to be Protocol implementers and thus collaborate in their own destruction. If Jeffrey Donaldson wants to humiliate himself and his party by returning to Stormont under these conditions he should be honest and say so.

As for this fallacy which the DUP continue to peddle that somehow NI can have the best of both worlds – equal citizenship in the UK is incompatible with subjection to EU law. We are either full and equal citizens of the UK or we are part of an EU colony awaiting the moment when we are finally subsumed into a united Ireland. To pretend otherwise is at best naive.

Richard Ferguson, Dollingstown