Speaking to an anti-Protocol rally in South Down last night, TUV leader Jim Allister said:-
“When GB, as our biggest trading partner and component part of the United Kingdom of which we are a part, is decreed and treated by the Protocol as a “third country” vis-a-vis Northern Ireland, then, anyone can see the constitutional threat of this iniquitous arrangement.
“What does it mean to be a “third country”? It simply means foreign country for the purposes of trade and imports. But, it also makes very clear that it is the EU’s writ which runs in Northern Ireland on our trade and imports. It is the veritable manifestation of our annexation, without consent, into the EU and the denial of Brexit to Northern Ireland.
“So, under the Protocol bringing goods from GB, part of our own country, is treated the same as bringing goods from Brazil, Bolivia or Afghanistan!
“This is not just an economic outrage but above all a constitutional outrage! No Unionist, with even a modicum of appreciation of what is involved, should ever acquiesce in, never mind implement, such a monstrous arrangement.
“As for grace periods and easements, they are but aids to helping the iniquitous Protocol bed in.
“So long as we are left in a foreign single market for goods, subject to a foreign customs code and vat regime and all the EU laws that go with them, under the adjudication of the foreign ECJ, then, so long are we in a state of vassalage that no self-respecting democrat should accept.
“Ours is a cause of liberation. We must be set free from the tyranny of laws we don’t make and can’t change, from foreign customs, from the diktats of a foreign court and from the resulting destruction of our cherished constitutional position.
“TUV has been clear from day one about the Union-dismantling Protocol and will not rest until it is gone to the grave of shame it deserves.”