Lord Dodds: The DUP has consistently opposed any border in the Irish Sea

The attempts to revise history don’t end with republicanism’s attempts concerning the violence of the past.

There are so-called unionists who instead of uniting with like-minded unionists to fight off the Northern Ireland Protocol, are instead desperate to score petty party political points, hiding behind pseudonyms to do so (‘The DUP support for a regulatory border in the Irish Sea in 2019 was a catastrophic error — one of the worst unionist mis-judgements of recent history,’ September 27, see link below).

The record is clear. From the first mention of the Barnier backstop in February 2018 to the calling of the general election in November 2019 the DUP at Westminster consistently and sometimes alone led principled opposition to any notion of Northern Ireland being in a different single market or customs arrangement than the rest of the UK.

We consistently opposed the Theresa May backstop which created a regulatory border when some unionists, and many in business and civic leadership, were enthusiastic for it.

We voted it down three times in the House of Commons in the midst of intense pressure to come round and vote for it.

We consistently opposed Boris Johnson’s Protocol. Indeed, days before he succeeded in getting the Lib Dems and SNP to vote for a general election, we had stopped the protocol being progressed by winning a vote against his timetable motion.

We supported the creation of a veto for the Northern Ireland Assembly by requiring a cross community vote for the creation of any regulatory borders. That is not support for a regulatory border. That is a veto on a regulatory border.

That would have put the matter in our own hands, not the hands of London, or Dublin, or Brussels.

Our position would have ensured that Northern Ireland was in the same position as the rest of the UK as far as the single market was concerned.

No amount of revisionism by republicanism, or some in unionism, will succeed in altering the facts.

Lord Dodds of Duncairn OBE, Former DUP deputy leader

Letter: DUP support for a regulatory border in the Irish Sea in 2019 was a catastrophic error

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