Jim Allister draws parallel with Nazi puppet regime in response to Windsor Framework power-grab rumours

According to reports on the website PoliticsHome.com, backed up by comments from Alliance MLA Eoin Tennyson, the UK government is planning to take more direct control over the implementation of the framework.

It is not clear exactly what this would mean, and the UK government has declined to provide any clarity.

But it would reportedly involve the government in London directly ordering NI civil servants to enforce port checks in the absence of devolved ministers.

The Vichy regime collaborated with Nazi Germany in the occupation of France, with about half the country being under direct military occupation and the rest under the Vichy puppet government.

Mr Allister and Baroness Kate Hoey have used the example of Vichy to illustrate their disdain for the Irish Sea border on previous occasions.

In a statement today, he said: "The latest reported pressure tactic on Unionism to roll over and operate Stormont to implement the Union-dismantling Protocol - namely that Westminster will itself implement EU colonial rule on NI - must be as firmly rejected as previous attempts to subjugate the Union and Unionism.

"What such would amount to would be joint authority between HMG and the EU with the sovereignty bereft UK imposing on a supposed part of its territory foreign laws it didn’t make and can’t change.

"Even consideration of such is a telling insight into how beholden Sunak has become to the sovereignty-grabbing EU, quite apart from the inherent contempt for the very Acts of Union which created the United Kingdom of which he is Prime Minister.

"What it would do to devolution, if anyone was foolish enough to operate what is left, is emasculate the very purpose and reason for devolved powers, because it would see stripped out, across many departments, control over matters that were supposedly devolved.

"Agriculture, environment, economy, finance and others would become zombie departments providing a veneer to EU rule.

"No self-respecting devolutionist could consider such a Vichy role."

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