Yesterday we heard some fine words from DUP leader Sir Jeffery Donaldson, but, of course, it is actions that matter.
Trying to present the Prime Minister with the clear choice of saving the Protocol or saving the Stormont institutions is a long declared TUV strategy, built on the realisation that if the cost of Stormont is implementing the Union-dismantling Protocol then Stormont is unsustainable for every Unionist who puts the Union first.
Similarly maintaining the north-south bodies while our east-west links are damaged is pure insanity.
The down payment on Unionist intent and determination should be the immediate ending of all DAERA checks. Jim Allister and the TUV have been saying this from the start.
The Protocol - which the High Court states has already destroyed the foundation of the economic United Kingdom - is a vehicle to dismantle the Union, having effectively delivered us all into a foreign economic zone and subjected us to foreign laws. Hence, it is beyond redemption. It has to go. Mere tweaking is not an option, nor is rebranding it as something capable of being controlled through new Belfast Agreement institutions - such supports, not inhibits the Protocol and its creation of the stepping stone of an all-Ireland economy.
The litmus test for any Unionist to any solution to this situation is this - is Northern Ireland still in a foreign single market for goods, under a foreign customs code, subject to foreign regulations over which we have no voice and governed by a foreign court? If that is the case it will be forever unacceptable
Comments