Why does Robinson howl at the moon over future border poll when clear danger is right in front of us?

(NI needs a pro Union group to prepare for a border poll, News Letter, October 23).

This would be in preparation for a border poll which may take place some years in the future.

In contrast to this, there is a real and immediate threat to the Union represented by the Irish Sea Border, which will damage immediately and arguably irrevocably the status of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom.

If this goes ahead, the Union as we now know it will not be the subject of any future border poll. At that point we would be voting on a debased version of the Union in which we cannot trade freely with the rest of the United Kingdom and are in many ways a colonial outpost of the EU subject to its rules and regulations, but without any say in how they are drawn up.

His ideas only make sense if the present and overwhelming advantages of the Union for our trade and for our democracy actually exist.

The DUP, and to a lesser extent the Ulster Unionist Party, have a number of courses of action (many suggested in the letters columns of the News Letter) which, even at this late stage, can be used to apply political leverage to frustrate the Irish Sea Border and the break up of the Union if they only have the guts to use them.

And with the December 31 deadline looming now is the opportunity to put maximum pressure on the British Government.

In my humble opinion the best service Mr Robinson could give to the Union at present would be to encourage his party’s elected representatives to actively and effectively oppose the Irish Sea Border, rather than howling at the moon over a future border poll.

The alternative is that the DUP will be remembered by posterity as the party whose minister put in place the infrastructure of the Irish Sea Border and so destroyed our position as an integral part of the United Kingdom.

Philip Black, Lurgan

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