Irish Sea border: Kate Hoey says the Sir Jeffrey Donaldson of 2022 is 'very different' to his 2024 incarnation and suggests DUP leader is trying to 'cover up his u-turn in a puff of smoke'

The Co Antrim-born former Labour MP, now without a party affiliation, said that the “humble address” which the government has issued in the past 24 hours (a formal statement designed to reassure unionists that NI remains an integral part of the UK) “does not alter one word of the Protocol or its effect on the Belfast Agreement”.

She told the Lords that instead of being upfront about how “meaningless” this statement was “we are urged to play along that the Belfast Agreement hasn’t been changed and the Acts of Union aren’t still vandalised”.

She turned to Sir Jeffrey’s own remarks on Monday in the House of Commons, in which the DUP leader had drawn a distinction between his party’s stated aim of “fulfilling” the Acts of Union, as opposed to other unionists’ desire of “restoring something”.

Sir Jeffrey had also told the Commons that critics of the DUP had “not bothered to read the original Acts of Union, who did not know what they were talking about, who seek to rewrite history and who declare themselves as the champions of Unionism but do not know their facts”.

This, Baroness Hoey said, amounted to “attacking the very people he stood with over years of campaigning and protest… myself, Jim Allister, Ben Habib, Jamie Bryson and many others”, adding that Sir Jeffrey “refuses to debate” with them in public.

She went on to cite a string of past statements made by Sir Jeffrey going back years, adding: “Very different now the Sir Jeffrey Donaldson 2024 from 2022.”

“Being blunt,” she continued, “the only person who seems to have really u-turned on all this is the leader of the DUP.

"His outburst on the Acts of Union is about I believe covering his own u-turn and his efforts to create a whole puff of smoke around the Acts of Union to conceal the reality that far from undoing the constitutional damage to that foundational legislation, he now accepts and implements it…

"There is nothing wrong with changing your opinion... I respect people who do that, if they are honest and it say it with intellectual honesty, rather than lashing out at those who have not changed and who have remained true to their principles.

"He clearly wanted to get the Assembly back and that's fair enough.

“But you do that by being honest and straightforward with people and not trying to do a deal with a government to produce words like this that are actually meaningless.”

She concluded by saying: “If we are going to address His Majesty the King then I say we should be telling him the truth.”

Baroness Hoey tabled an amendment to the “humble address” which lamented that, despite the government’s rhetoric, the Protocol continues to “over-ride and suspend" parts of the Acts of Union 1800.