If the ‘price’ of Stormont is implementing the Northern Ireland Protocol then unionists should give up on devolution, Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister said today

“As long as the price of Stormont is the implementing this Union-dismantling Protocol then that is something which no unionist should be aiding and abetting,” he said.

In a message to other unionist leaders, he said: “If hard choices need to be made then make them.”

He also warned delegates that because of the so-called ‘grace period’ most of the Protocol’s rules governing trade between Northern Ireland and Britain have not yet been enacted.

“We are only in the shallows of the Protocol” in the EU’s drive towards “an economic All-Ireland”, Mr Allister said.

Speaking at the TUV’s gathering at Cookstown, Mr Allister said the DUP needed to do more than simply withdraw their First Minister from the Executive in the campaign against the Protocol.

The TUV leader accused the DUP of “sleep walking” into the Protocol particular in the creation of border installations at Northern Irish ports which he has labelled “Poots posts”. The posts are staffed by the Department of Agriculture whose minister is Edwin Poots.

“This Protocol makes us subject to a foreign jurisdiction, a foreign single market, foreign customs posts, a foreign VAT regime and all ruled over by foreign laws that we didn’t make, and we can’t change. That is no place for any free people who believe in the fundamental right of making and governing through our own laws not foreign colonial laws,” he said.

Mr Allister said it wasn’t enough for the British Government to trigger Article 16 which in his view would only delay the Protocol’s implementation.

“Let me clear to you – Article 16 is but a step it’s not a solution. It presses the pause button and then embarks on further years of endless negotiation. What we need from the British Government in respect of this Protocol is much more than Article 16. What need is a repudiation of the Protocol. And even with Article 16 if it ever comes this battle would not be over. It will not be over until the EU gives up its ill-gotten sovereignty over this place.”

On the prospect of a Sinn Fein First Minister after the elections on 5 May, Mr Allister told the conference this could only come about “if a stooge of a unionist party would fill the post of Deputy First Minister.”

He pledged that the TUV would “never be the bridesmaid for Sinn Fein” in “enthroning” the republican party to the post of First Minister.

“My challenge today to other unionists: will they assure the unionist people of the same?” Mr Allister added.

In its 14-year existence the TUV still only has one MLA at Stormont – its leader Jim Allister. The party does have seven councillors including Stephen Cooper who is standing for the TUV in Strangford and Harold McKee, the party’s candidate in South Down.

However, Mr Allister predicted further gains at the forthcoming Assembly election.

He claimed that there was a “rising tide of support” for the party in all the recent opinion polls which would be borne out at the ballot box in May.

“You do get what you vote for. This party has earned the trust of the unionist people because of our consistency. The TUV was about principle before power,” he said.

Mr Allister predicted the TUV will “wipe the smiles of our naysayers” who have questioned the party’s rise in the polls when the actual votes were counted.

As well as criticising the DUP Mr Allister used his speech to attack Doug Beattie’s stance on the current deadlock at Stormont and the Protocol.

“I have seen some remarkable ill-judged pontifications on the Protocol but none more absurd than Doug Beattie’s for suggesting that the answer to the Protocol was another North-South body to oversee it. That’s not an unalterable objection but a facilitation,” he said.

The TUV leader said his party would only support a form of devolution where there was a voluntary “coalition-of-the-willing” rather than the present mandatory coalition system of government.

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