Baroness Kate Hoey defends speech about Windsor Framework after UUP Doug Beattie blasts her 'link to Nazi regime'
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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Windsor Framework is a UK-EU deal which is intended to resolve unionist objections to the NI Protocol.
However the DUP say fundamental problems remain with it and are continuing to boycott the Powersharing Executive as a result - meaning Stormont remains suspended.
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Hide AdSpeaking in the House of Lords on Wednesday, former Baroness Hoey said: "If Stormont goes back with this present Windsor Framework, it would be almost like what happened in France during the war with the Vichy Government: all those MLAs would be collaborators with a kind of colonial Government, taking foreign laws from a foreign legislature...".
But UUP leader Doug Beattie slammed her speech, saying the return of devolved government is needed to secure the union and challenge the weaknesses of the WF.
"To link that to Nazi regime is pathetic," he said. "I ask all unionist leaders, political and civic, to distance themselves from these words."
This prompted loyalist activist Jamie Bryson to rush to her defence.
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Hide Ad" As ever, Beattie [is] first out of the traps to criticise unionists," he said. "I think unionist politicians should be urging all unionists to distance themselves from the Union-subjugating UUP!"
But the UUP leader hit back. "This pathetic excuse of a person has been putting unionist against unionist for years," he responded. "Now he is supporting unionists being referred to as Nazi collaborators. Damn right I’ll criticise it."
Baroness Hoey told the News Letter on Thursday that she had nowhere used the term "Nazi" in her Westminster speech.
What she meant, she said, was that MLAs who go back into the assembly under the WF "are effectively going back into what is really a kind of semi colony of the EU".
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Hide AdShe added: "They will have to implement any EU laws coming through and that is very similar to what happened in the Vichy government - it has nothing to do with Nazis as such. And I stand by that."
Mr Beattie told the News Letter he was standing over the remarks he had made on social media.