You can access our two policy documents launched this morning are online at the following links:
Extract from Jim Allister’s comments at launch of TUV/Reform UK manifesto:
As a Unionist party, the Union is our overriding concern.
Sadly, our Union has been splintered by the Protocol and will be more so in the coming year as the full customs border kicks in – partitioning border, Art 6 in suspension, subject to foreign rule in over 300 areas of law. This amounts to the most egregious affront to our supposed place as an integral part of UK.
In no small part to remedy that, that we have alliance with Reform UK – the unionist party of popular growth in GB which, as epitomised in Ben Habib, cares, as we do, about the Union and NI’s place within it. We are the only party with such a pan-unionist, pan-national alliance.
This is a manifesto centred on reunification of the UK. Only when the foundations are right can all else be built into place.
In any building or renovation project you must have confidence in the builder. One who makes you false promises can never recover your trust.
And, so it is with restoring the Union. If your renovating builder assured you he had removed the dry rot, only to later admit he had not, he wouldn’t remain long as your builder! Here the DUP told us they had removed the dry rot of the Irish Sea border, only to have to admit they had not.
The fundamental prerequisite in any people/ politician relationship is honesty, without it trust is irreparably broken.
The DUP won the contract in the last election to restore the Union. They failed lamentably. But worse, they lied about it.
The Donaldson Deal will forever stand as the greatest contrivance of lies and deception ever attempted on the unionist people. It changed not one word of the Unionist-dismantling Protocol, yet was brazenly sold as having demolished the Irish Sea border, neutered EU law and restored our place within the UK. Each of those Donaldson/Robinson claims were false!
The subsequent admission of as much leaves the DIP as having shredded its own credibility and forfeited its entitlement to ever again be trusted by unionist voters.
Now, to add to the dishonesty, we have rudderless flip flopping – the latest of which came this week with the screeching u-turn in the Assembly on EU law and the previous embrace of access to the EU single market.
In contrast to this Groucho Marx offering of the DUP – those are my principles, if you don’t like them, I have others – stands the steadfastness of the TUV. We do not wilt or wobble, and u-turns are not our thing. Conviction, not expediency is our guide.
So, in this election TRUST is rightly the defining issue for many.
Those who in February falsely claimed the Irish Sea border is gone, EU law is thwarted and our place restored in the UK, do not deserve the votes of those they so deliberately sought to hoodwink.
That is why I’m delighted to be able to offer in this election the contrasting and unshakeable unionism of TUV/Reform UK. It is time to build back what has been lost and squandered by those previously entrusted to deliver, but who failed miserably and left unionism in a much worse position than they found it. The DUP’s stewardship of the Union has been not just woeful but damaging.
The challenge of building back is daunting but with truth on our side and with the help of men of principle like Ben Habib, we will not falter.