Unionists must up the pressure over Northern Ireland Protocol

The next stage of the campaign to “Get Brexit Done” through securing the demise of the protocol is rapidly approaching. Our Government purports to be negotiating hard to secure this aim, notwithstanding that the EU negotiating team have not as yet been given a mandate to make anything other than cosmetic changes. The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, last week issued a statement calling for the UK and the EU to “protect and implement” the protocol.

It is a racing certainty that negotiations with the EU will soon prove futile and to have been a total waste of the past two years, during which the economy and the political infrastructure of NI have continued to be eroded.

Irish politicians continue to stoke the flames through their inability to resist the temptation to intermeddle in what are the affairs of the UK. They maintain that “power sharing” with Sinn Fein is essential for part of their UK neighbour whilst they themselves abhor any suggestion that the Irish should accommodate in government the fellow travellers of the criminal underworld.

When Irish ministers invite unionists to meet with them it does not represent any genuine interest in seeking mutually agreed understanding. It is long overdue for unionists to politely decline to meet with them until the Irish demonstrate at least a modicum of respect for the British community in Ulster.

The wider unionist family must, as a matter of urgency, under Chatham House rules, work out and agree the optimum strategy to up the pressure for the protocol to be consigned to history. Consideration should be given to taking the initiative to call for a 12-month suspension of the Assembly to allow time for the Protocol Bill to pass through all parliamentary stages, and for the government thereby to be armed with the legislative resources to finally “Get Brexit Done”! Until that happens it is my bet that the assembly will not meet other than to hear Sinn Fein vacuously claim that they have the perfect solution to the economic crisis, and that if they were in an executive all economic woes would magically disappear. If they genuinely imagine that they have found a goose that lays that golden egg why aren’t they at Westminster sharing their knowledge with the Parliament there?

The emasculated assembly that masquerades at Stormont is now a total and expensive white elephant. When Westminster doesn’t like their views on devolved matters they override local opinion. The government argued in the recent Supreme Court litigation challenging the protocol that it only involved minimally usurping the Acts of Union. That is akin to asserting that a woman is “a little bit pregnant”. Until the protocol is laid to rest maintaining the assembly in being is simply ventilating a corpse. A process that is expensive and of no value to anyone.

Unionists have been taken for fools by our own government for too long. The Rubicon has now been crossed. There is no going back. The ante must be ratcheted up until all the people of Northern Ireland once more enjoy full and equal citizenship with the rest of the UK. Why do Sinn Fein and their Alliance sidekicks find it objectionable for the people of Northern Ireland to be treated equally? That, however, remains a matter for another day.

Jeremy Burchill, North Yorkshire

(Former Ulster Unionist Assembly Member (1982-86) for East Belfast)