A letter from TUV leader Jim Allister to Sir Robert Buckland KC MP following his comments on the BBC last night is reproduced below.
Dear Sir Robert,
I found your remarks on ‘BBC The View’ that it was time for intelligent and cerebral unionism supremely arrogant and offensive.
It is thinking unionists who repudiate the Protocol and refuse to give it the credibility of implementing it, because of its insidious assault on the very essence of unionism, namely the right to equal citizenship within our own country.
With the Protocol requiring, through application of the EU Customs Code to NI, GB to be regarded as a third/foreign country whose goods must be checked coming into what is now treated as EU territory, where the EU, not British, writ runs in terms of the manufacturing and sale of our goods, its dismantling of the union is obvious. Little wonder the Supreme Court had to hold that it has put that key constitutional building block of our union, Art 6 of the Act(s) of Union, into suspension.
Yet, it is in these circumstances that you wish unionists to operate this Union-dismantling Protocol through Stormont, with the added consequence of building its intended economic all-Ireland. Only the unthinking and those indifferent to the Union could do so. Refusing to implement our own destruction in common parlance is a ‘no brainer’.
It was also disappointing to hear you at one and the same time boasting of your unionist credentials and then threatening the meddling of a foreign jurisdiction in the administration of this part of the United Kingdom. Surely, your unionism should make you a staunch opponent of such?
I trust you might reflect on your advocacy of that which is consciously pushing Northern Ireland out of our union.
Yours sincerely,
Jim Allister KC MLA