Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris' position is 'pretty irretrievable' after Good Friday Agreement conference speech: TUV

Mr Heaton-Harris drew a lot of flak for his address on Tuesday, when he said “Martin McGuinness, along with Gerry Adams, will be remembered for the courage and leadership they showed” around the time of the Good Friday Agreement.

He had also said that “the narrative that the Agreement struck in 1998 did not achieve great things for unionism [and] was somehow all about ‘wins’ for nationalism… is wrong”.

The DUP issued a statement in the wake of this speech, saying that Mr Heaton-Harris sounded more like a “clueless Irish-American congressman” than a Tory minister.

With the conference now over, asked by the News Letter whether he thinks Mr Heaton-Harris has lost the confidence of unionism, Mr Allister said: “I couldn't imagine, if he was determined to lose confidence, how he could do it better in terms of the things he's been doing and saying.”

These include over-selling the Windsor Framework, amounting to “an exhortation to accept what he wouldn't accept for his own constituents: colonisation by the EU”.

And then to “top it off” with praise for Mr Adams “I think he's just probably put himself in a pretty irretrievable position”.

As for the whole three-day commemorative extravaganza at Queen’s, Mr Allister said: “For any discerning unionist, they overdid it. They probably thought it'd have a very positive, bouncy effect.

"A lot of unionists I've been talking to on the doorstep are just turned off by it... particularly the adulation of Gerry Adams, and the pretence it was a system that ever worked.”

The city was teeming with GB and overseas media, and Mr Allister said that watching coverage of “the great and the not-so-good” at the conference will leave them with a “false impression – that the Belfast Agreement delivered something worth celebrating when the institutions are in tatters because of its inherent self-destruct mechanisms”.

Meanwhile UUP peer Sir Reg Empey, when asked if Mr Heaton-Harris had lost unionist confidence, said: “I'm not sure he ever had it, in so far as recent Secretaries of State have not been seen to be particularly engaged in many respects.”

Lord Empey added: “What I think his speech indicated was the government has tried, over the last six-to-nine months, to work with the DUP to try and make things more acceptable to them.

"I believe they were deeply engaged in the discussions on the Stormont Brake and the government is losing its patience with them – because they thought they had understandings and the DUP hasn't delivered on those.

"I think his speech indicated a loss on his part of patience with the DUP.

"London is now locked into the framework. It's been passed by both houses of parl with 95% majorities.

"The government has moved on. To suggest they're going to tear up the Framework at this stage and start a whole row with Europe, it's not going to happen.”

The News Letter put criticisms of Mr Heaton-Harris to the Northern Ireland Office, but it had not responded at time of writing.

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