Ben Habib: All unionists should support Liz Truss to become Conservative leader

The question is a flawed one. To describe Northern Ireland as a third entity is the error.

NI, in my mind at least, is an integral part of the United Kingdom. I have no greater or lesser interest in it than any other part of the UK.

The Northern Ireland Protocol created an existential threat to the integrity of our country. Its most obvious impact is on NI but, by definition, it affects all the UK. We will not be a United Kingdom if the protocol is not neutered. It is as simple as that.

Irrespective of other considerations, just by his stance on the protocol, Rishi Sunak disqualifies himself as a worthy candidate to be prime minister. He declares Brexit is done even though Northern Ireland has not left the EU. He was against invoking Article 16 to suspend the protocol. He was critical of Liz Truss’s apparent desire to challenge the protocol with her new bill. He would rather delay and dither than risk a trade war with the EU.

A government’s principal obligation is the security and defence of the realm. No one in government is entitled to take another view. Yet Sunak, like the current incumbent of No. 10, thinks not in terms of that obligation but in terms of economic and political expediency.

Boris Johnson was in gross dereliction of duty when he signed us up to the protocol and then did close to nothing to get rid of it. Indeed, every member of his government was and is, by association, guilty of that dereliction — including Liz Truss.

But, and this is a big but, Truss at least has made real effort in the right direction. Her bill is not a solution in itself but it provides a framework for a solution. If she is honest and follows through with all the requisite legislation, the protocol should be largely dispatched.

So Truss has my full support. I will do whatever I reasonably can to ensure she wins the leadership and becomes our next prime minister. And, if she is elected to that position, I will do my very best to hold her to her promises. All unionists should do the same.

Indeed, we must go further. We should not compromise on the integrity of our country. There is a simpler, quicker and more elegant solution to the protocol than the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. It is a solution Johnson, as an architect of the protocol, could not accept.

It is this: she should accept the protocol fundamentally broke our constitution and domestic law. She should accept that it illegally broke the Act of Union and the Belfast Agreement, as my fellow litigants and I have contended in our judicial review. No MP in Parliament clear sightedly voted to break our constitution when they voted for the protocol. Johnson sold them a pup. That is the truth of the matter; if it were not, her bill itself would not be required.

By conceding our judicial review, the protocol would immediately be deemed to be domestically illegal. And, under international convention, it would be the EU that would then have broken international law (by signing an agreement in breach of fundamental domestic British law).

In one simple step Truss would eject the protocol, negate the need for reams of subsequent legislation and dispense with accusations of her bill breaking international law.

First things first, all unionists should support the election of Liz Truss as leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party and therefore our prime minister.

l Ben Habib is a former Brexit Party MEP