Speaking to Newry & Armagh TUV Annual Dinner on Saturday night Jim Allister warned the Government that weakening on the Protocol would store up destabilising pressures on the very institutions which the Protocol dishonesty claims to protect.
“I can think of no quicker and more assured way to alienate Unionists even more from the failing Stormont institutions than to attach to them in perpetuity the price tag of implementing the Union-dismantling Protocol. Even those who have foolishly encouraged the bedding in of the Protocol through authorising the daily checks – some 24,000 last month alone (https://tuv.org.uk/poots-staff-carrying-out-24000-protocol-checks-per-month/) – are likely to find it impossible to carry on after the end of the grace periods astronomically multiples our severance from GB.
“TUV is very clear that empty threats and unfulfilled deadlines from the current lead party of unionism has made it easier for HMG to prevaricate and procrastinate on taking out the Protocol, but in the end it must go, in all its parts.
“Nothing that leaves us in a foreign single market for goods, under a foreign customs code and all the foreign laws enforcing such, can ever be dressed up as workable or acceptable. All these issues turn on the issue of sovereignty and it is that which HMG must address and reclaim.
“The designation of Great Britain as a ‘third’ or foreign country can never be reconciled with Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom. We cannot be both integral to the EU and its regimes and integral to the United Kingdom. There is no fudge acceptable on these fundamental constitutional issues.
“So my message to both the Government and fellow Unionists is the same: there is no room for equivocation or compromise on these core constitutional issues. TUV is clear – Unionism must win the Protocol battle or lose the Union!”
ENDS
CLANRYE NEWS 