Letter: Let’s stop pretending the Union is intact - we can’t even sell poppies in the same manner as every other part of the UK

In and of itself there is nothing wrong with that. All legitimate aspirations. If I was a republican I would be doing the same thing.

From a point of view of unionist strategy, however, it is clear that all the momentum and all the thought for the future centres around all-Ireland integration. There is absolutely nobody outside of core unionism looking at how we replace the Irish Sea border or restore NI to full UK membership.

The story printed in the News Letter around the need for poppy sellers to display EU signs (Poppy sellers face absurd EU bureaucracy – Swann, October 25) surely illustrates in the simplest, most emotive and easy to understand manner that under the Windsor Framework we are simply not considered properly British and that we are effectively being treated as a foreign country which will likely get worse over time.

It is simply incredulous to think that returning to the Stormont executive has in any way allowed unionism to challenge the Irish Sea border; indeed, we are bestowing legitimacy upon it. The secretary of state often says that he believes the Good Friday Agreement was the last Labour government’s greatest achievement.

The Windsor Framework clearly abolishes the unionist half of that agreement but by being in government we allow the secretary of state and others to pretend that agreement is still intact and that there is no problem to fix.

I accept that Boris Johnson placed our political leaders in a very difficult position but I continue to be concerned that the strategy of making NI work under the current framework is effectively a policy of making joint authority work which, in my view, can have but one pathway to a 32-county united Ireland.

If we can’t even do something as simple as sell poppies in the same manner as every other part of the UK can we really pretend the Union is intact?

R G McDowell, Belfast BT5