New Windsor Framework arrangements 'trash' Northern Ireland's status within the UK

As the red and green lanes at NI ports came into effect on Sunday, loyalist activist Jamie Bryson said “no self-respecting unionist” should be urging a return to business as usual at Stormont.

The NI Centre for the Union director said: “Today, as the latest hardening of the Irish Sea border comes into force, it iimportant unionists and loyalists of all shades stand firm.

"There can never be any sense of acceptance or tolerance of this threat of violence-rewarding arrangement.”

Mr Bryson has repeatedly argued that the prospect of attacks on customs posts along the Irish land border was the driving force behind the new trade border down the middle of the Irish Sea.

“There is no government in NI because the basis upon which power sharing is based has been upended by the imposition of the Union-subjugating Protocol framework which treats unionists as second class citizens,” he said.

“What next? Shall we be sitting at separate lunch counters? At the back of the bus? For 25 years unionism has been expected to give, in order that nationalism can get.

“The most vivid illustration of that previously covert, but all too obvious, concept has come about by the Irish Sea border.“We now have a hard and a soft customs border in the Irish Sea, but both – so called red and green lanes – represent a customs border. The guarantee of equal footing and citizenship has been trashed.

“No self respecting unionist should debase themselves by urging a return to power sharing.

"Such pleas for parley and surrender are calls to cross the joint unionist picket line.”

Mr Bryson added: “Those who would return to Stormont and implement the subjugation of the Union must squarely confront the consequences of their collaboration.

"There is no Nuremberg defence available.

"Whilst the Protocol lives, the Belfast Agreement is dead.”