Anti-protocol campaigners vow to fight on after Windsor Framework ratified

Baroness Kate Hoey quoted former prime minister Margaret Thatcher in a defiant Twitter message.

"You might have to fight a battle more than once to win it," the former Labour MP tweeted along with a photo of Mrs Thatcher.

Ms Hoey’s tweet added: “Perhaps the Government should remember this and understand that the battle to end the ‘Windsor Framework’ starts today.

"The reality of its operation will prove that it will not work and the EU will tighten its leverage over the whole of the UK. #equalcitizenshipforNI.”

Speaking on GB News, former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe says the Windsor Framework puts the Union in peril.

'We still have a situation, after all this tinkering, in which EU law prevails in Northern Ireland,” she said.

Also reacting to the deal being ratified, loyalist activist Jamie Bryson said: “They think that’s the end of the matter. That’s what they thought about the Protocol too.

"The fight is only just beginning. For so long as the Union-subjugating Protocol Framework suspends the Union, Stormont will remain suspended.”

Anti-protocol protester Moore Holmes tweeted: "There needs to be a strong, comprehensive, collective and persuasive information campaign around the Windsor Framework exposing its very clear limitations and the inevitable problems it poses Northern Ireland."

Speaking ahead of the deal being signed off by UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and EU negotiator Maros Sefcovic, a DUP MP said the NI Secretary will have to “come to terms with the reality for all of us who actually live here,” that “politics and governance in Northern Ireland only works when there is a cross community political consensus”.

East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell said: “How many agreements and deals have become 'International law' only to be replaced by further deals and agreements that had to be implemented because there was a realisation that the earlier models were not fit for purpose?”