As guest speaker at The Twelfth in Broughshane, TUV leader Jim Allister warned that sticking plaster will never mend what he called “our fractured Union with GB.”
“Our Union is fractured. Fractured by the pernicious Protocol and its confirming Windsor Whitewash, as delivered by those who in their perfidy called the Union “precious”.
“For over three decades and knee deep in innocent blood the IRA tried everything to break our Union. But where the IRA failed, the tragic truth is the Protocol succeeded. Succeeded in pushing the border to the Irish Sea, succeeded, by putting us in the same legal and economic footing as the Republic, in starting transition into an all-Ireland economically – itself a stepping stone.
“To fully understand the constitutional consequences of what has happened, we need to grasp what our Union is. It is exactly what the Acts of Union say: a political union, manifested by the single sovereign parliament for the whole United Kingdom, as created by Art 3 of the Acts of Union; and an economic union of free and unfettered internal trade, as established by Art 6 of the Acts of Union.
“When the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, decrees Art 6 to be in suspension, because it is overruled by the superior Protocol, then, any unionist with the most rudimentary grasp of reality will know that to implement the Protocol is to self-destruct the very thing that defines us as unionists. Without the Union we are nothing but easy prey for all-Ireland conspirators – of which the EU is one!
“The border in the Irish Sea is not about protecting the EU single market, it is about our absorption into an all-Ireland. Forcing business to reorientate its supply chains on a north-south basis and subjecting us to the same economic and trading laws as the Republic is key to building Irish Unity. Governing us as a condominium, subject to foreign laws and jurisdiction, with even control of movements of goods from GB under EU, not UK, law, is to ensure our transition out of the UK. The Protocol is not the end game for the EU and its republican backers, it is but a means to an end.
“Faced with such betrayal, what should Unionism do? Some advocate Stormont sticking plaster. That is not the answer. It will not mend our fractured Union.
“One thing is abundantly clear – we should not facilitate our own destruction. To operate Stormont in these circumstances – where imposing foreign EU laws and a partitioning border in the Irish Sea would become the unavoidable function of Stormont – is the surest route to facilitating the journey out of the UK. The virulence of the demand for a return to Stormont from Sinn Fein and their little helpers is evidence in itself of whose cause that would assist. So, any Unionist focus on restoring Stormont under the Protocol is wholly misguided!
Stormont, now, would just be a Protocol prop.
“No, faced with such treacherous times, Unionism needs to return to basics. What was the core demand of our forefathers when faced with the treachery of the Home Rule Crisis? You find that core demand at the very hear of the Ulster Covenant of 1912 – it was the simple but irrefutable demand for “equal citizenship” within the United Kingdom.
“That is the bedrock to which unionism should return. The demand for equal citizenship is unanswerable. To demand to be ruled, as in GB, exclusively by British laws, to be subject to the jurisdiction of British courts, to have restored equality in trade, to have the Acts of Union defining our constitutional alignment – these are all basic and undeniable demands. So,my message to unionism today is get back to the basics of what makes us unionists and hold tenaciously to those demands – it is the only route to constitutional certainty and security. ‘One Crown, One Parliament, One People’ remains the essence of the Union and is what we need.”