Addressing the packed TUV dinner in Brownlow House on Saturday night Jim Allister said;
“Just one week on the Donaldson Deal, which was a fraud and a deceit from the beginning, is becoming increasingly exposed as threadbare and a con. If it was a tangible product it would be fall at the first hurdle under the Trade Descriptions Act.
“It claims to have restored our place in the UK – it has not. It leaves us under a Customs Code that decrees GB a foreign country and Art 6 is still in suspension.
“It claims the Irish Sea border is gone. It is not. Before our eyes the border posts continue to be built and the EU’s writ runs.
“It claims control over the laws that govern us has been restored. Wrong, again. The truth is, as Lords Dodds, Lord Morrow and Sammy Wilson rightly say, “In some 300 areas EU jurisdiction has been applied through hundreds of foreign laws and that all remains fully in force. The “Stormont Brake” does not apply to this. Northern Ireland producers and consumers are subject to foreign laws even where they do not trade with the EU at all. The EU still has the sole right to propose and make laws in these areas.”
“Dress it up as he might, Sir Jeffrey’s deal is a humiliating surrender. Surrender on the Protocol and surrender to Sinn Fein rule. He is an emperor with no clothes, except those he got from long time surrender outfitter, Doug Beattie. The clothes he sported at anti-Protocol rallies from the TUV wardrobe have long since been discarded and with them the goodwill from TUV voters which saw multiple DUP MLAs elected on TUV transfers. Never again!
“Nor can candidates endorsing the DUP’s Protocol implementing stance expect free passage to Westminster later this year. A Protocol implementer is a Protocol implementer, whatever party flag they fly.”