Statement by TUV Leader Jim Allister:-
“Today in the Assembly we had Donaldson/Robinson loyalist, Deborah Erskine, disavow a centre piece of the Donaldson Deal which she hitherto has espoused, namely, Northern Ireland’s subjection to EU law as the price of access to the EU market.
“I and others have long exposed the folly of being willing to pay the price of submitting to foreign laws we don’t make and can’t change for the sake of supposed, but grossly exaggerated, benefits of access to the EU single market, while all the time our access to our own U.K. market was fettered by the same EU laws.
“If, because of the election, the DUP, having first said the Irish Sea border was gone before retreating from that falsehood, is now acknowledging the folly of that which they pledged fidelity to in the useless Donaldson Deal, then it is progress. However, it is another underscoring of the DUP’s flip flopping and unreliability on the crucial sovereignty issues at the heart of the Union-dismantling Protocol.
“If the DUP had thrown its full weight behind ‘mutual enforcement’, instead of embracing the Windsor Framework through the Donaldson Deal, then the fight against the sea border and EU law would have been easier.
“Now the electorate must decide who they trust on these crucial constitutional issues. The response to my canvass causes me to believe the DUP has rightly lost the trust of many.”