“With ‘informed’ speculation about the Government’s offer to the DUP focusing on the presentation/packaging of the Irish Sea Border, it is timely to spell out exactly and fully what the Irish Sea Border actually is.
“It arises because under the Protocol NI is subject to the EU’s Customs Code which requires GB, as non-EU territory, to be treated as a third or foreign country whose goods must be subject to EU checks when entering its territory, which NI is deemed to be and where EU law applies.
“Only the removal of NI from under the EU Customs Code and associated EU law can remove the legal basis of the Irish Sea Border. Anything else is tinkering.
“It is suggested the UK government may promise to direct removal of checks in ‘the green lane’ and thereby claim the Irish Sea border is gone. Even its legal capacity to do this is suspect – given its surrender of sovereignty on border issues to the EU – but, such would not remove the partitioning sea border.
“A key fact is that all raw materials for NI manufacturing passes through the red lane. So, even dissipating the green lane leaves untouched the vast array of imported material which, under the Protocol, is presumed to be at risk of entering the EU single market. In truth the green lane largely assists supermarket supplies and little else.
“Thus, easements in the green lane, even its total abolition, would not remove the Irish Sea border, nor the constitutional affront which it presents.
“Nor would easements in the green lane remove one syllable of EU law, with every jot and tittle of the hundreds of imposed European laws in Annex 2 of the Protocol continuing to be imposed. Nor would less divergence by GB undo any of the law and structures which created the partitioning sea border in the first place. Unless and until sovereignty is reclaimed from the EU over our trade and border, nothing of constitutional substance will change.
“So, to unionists I say, when the inevitable attempt to hoodwink you that the Irish Sea border has been removed, judge what you are being told not by the spin but by the reality that the iniquitous Protocol remains unaltered.”