Street protests and rallies against NI Protocol set to return, with unionist leaders set for event on Thursday

The leaders of the DUP and TUV, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and Jim Allister, are due to address an anti-protocol rally at Dromore Orange Hall on Thursday evening, alongside prominent Brexiteers Baroness Kate Hoey and the former MEP Ben Habib.

Meanwhile, thousands are expected to converge on the Co Armagh village of Markethill the following weekend, the scene of several large-scale and sometimes controversial demonstrations against the Protocol over the past year.

Baroness Hoey, who campaigned in favour of the UK’s exit from the European Union during her time as an MP, has been a prominent critic of the deal agreed by Boris Johnson for allowing a trade border in the Irish Sea.

In a column, published by the Telegraph newspaper in London, the former Vauxhall MP said: “The street protests will be back and the pause on protest rallies lifted.”

Alongside the former Brexit Party MEP Mr Habib, she is among the lead applicants in a judicial review of the Protocol which is currently before the courts.

Thursdays’s event, at 7.30pm, is being hosted by Lower Iveagh District Orange Lodge Number 1.

Lower Iveagh District Master John Wilkinson said: “The Orange Order has been to the fore in opposing the Protocol which partitions the United Kingdom. A border has been driven down the Irish Sea without the consent of the people of Northern Ireland, undermining our constitutional position, damaging our economy and, as the events of the past week have shown, destabilising our politics.

“We as a District are glad to be able to present grassroots Unionists with an opportunity to hear from Unionist leaders and those taking the fight against the Protocol to the courts. We would stress that this event is open to all in the Orange family and wider Unionism who are concerned about the ramifications of the EU’s attempt to claim this part of the United Kingdom as its own.”

He continued: “I believe that this rally will provide people with an opportunity to be better educated about the Protocol and its dangers.

“Just what does it mean to be part of a foreign single market and under a foreign customs code and VAT regime? How is it compatible with basic democratic norms to be governed by foreign laws we don’t make and can’t change and overseen by a foreign court?”