Assembly elections: UUP candidate Philip Smith defends decision to speak at anti-NI Protocol rally

Councillor Philip Smith said he does not regard his presence at the meeting to be at odds with UUP leader Doug Beattie who announced last month that he would no longer be attending public rallies against the protocol.

Mr Beattie claimed the protests were being used to heighten political tension in Northern Ireland and being turned into a de facto campaign against the Belfast Agreement.

But Mr Smith said that he will use the indoor meeting in Saintfield to articulate the UUP’s position on the protocol.

“The bottom line here is that this meeting gives me an opportunity to engage with constituents. What I will be telling them is that the UUP have been against the protocol from day one. The UUP were the first to highlight the dangers of it but where we differ from other unionist parties is we don’t believe you should abandon good government as a bargaining chip to get rid of the protocol.

“I agree with my party that it was wrong for the DUP to walk away from government, in fact it was a self-inflicted wound. We maintain the Union by making this place work not by walking away,” he said.

He said he will tell those attending the rally that more can be achieved through engagement and negotiations than “stamping our feet and doing nothing”.

Mr Smith, who is one of the UUP’s two candidates in Strangford, added: “What I am consistently hearing on the doorsteps is that people want us to get on with governing, improve public services and help people with the cost of living crisis. That’s a consistent message I am getting around the doors.

“As for the protocol I will tell those present that we have proposals to alter it such as bringing in special green channels at our ports for goods only bound for Northern Ireland, to remove them from the Irish Sea border checks. “

Loyalist activist Jamie Bryson has welcomed the presence of a UUP public representative at the Saintfield rally and said he hoped it meant that Ulster Unionists are “returning to the unionist family”.

Mr Bryson said: “It was really disappointing when the UUP turned their back on the anti-protocol movement, and if Philip Smith’s presence is an indication that they have realised the error of their ways and want to return to the unionist family on this issue then that’s a really positive development.

“We are all unionists and the Union-subjugating protocol, the greatest constitutional threat our country has ever faced, is an issue which requires unity and a clarity of opposition from the entire unionist family.”

He claimed that the UUP have “perhaps inadvertently confused that message” by some of their utterances.

“This was compounded by the bizarre proposition that there was presently no fundamental constitutional threat.

“As Lord Trimble said in 1998, ‘The Act of Union is the Union’. He also said in his High Court affidavit in the protocol case that the protocol occasioned fundamental constitutional change without consent. He was right on both.

“The Act of Union has been ‘subjugated’ in the words of the Court of Appeal. It follows that what we presently face is as fundamental a constitutional threat as it’s possible to imagine.

“What we need now is unity on the constitutional threat facing Northern Ireland and I hope the UUP have now revised their position and will join the Union of unionists in our campaign of unalterable opposition to the protocol,” Mr Bryson added.

The loyalist activist will use a speech at an anti-protocol protest in Castlederg tonight to call on the UUP to rejoin the demonstrations against the post-Brexit trade deal, which all unionists agree has created a border down the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Mr Bryson is also expected to say that Mr Beattie should be treated with respect by all unionists and loyalists who are taking part in the protests.

At the end of last month the UUP leader said an attack on his constituency office in Portadown was “an inevitable consequence” of his decision to pull out of the anti-protocol rallies.

In Lurgan one of Mr Beattie’s election posters was vandalised with a noose pushed through it and was put on display at a separate anti-protocol meeting in the Co Armagh town.

The leaders of the other two main unionist parties, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and Jim Allister, both condemned the incident and the use of the words ‘traitor’ and ‘Lundy’ directed at Mr Beattie during the rally.

Mr Beattie has said that “blood and thunder rhetoric” from platforms will not help or solve the protocol problem.