Statement by TUV Leader and North Antrim MP Jim Allister:
“This morning’s Belfast Telegraph article lays bare the desperate spin the DUP has deployed to conceal the reality of the Irish Sea border. The panic of Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly when her own department advertised for a ‘Divergence Co-ordinator’ confirms what TUV has said all along: the border remains and Stormont is helping to implement it.
“The role was designed to manage and implement divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, something which would not be necessary if the Irish Sea border were truly gone.
“Yet the deputy First Minister’s reaction focused not on the substance of the divergence, but on the optics. Her concern wasn’t that Northern Ireland is being separated from Great Britain — it was that people will notice.
“What we see here is a party obsessed with damage control, not damage repair. It shows a DUP more concerned with hiding the truth than confronting the constitutional implications of the Protocol they are now helping to administer.
“Their return to Stormont was built on the claim that the Sea Border had been removed. New barriers, like the parcel border, continue to emerge.
“It is time the DUP stopped insulting the intelligence of the unionist electorate. You cannot ‘safeguard the Union’ by implementing its dismantling.
“If the DUP were serious about opposing the Protocol, they wouldn’t be sitting in a Protocol-implementing Executive. Not only are they doing that but, as this article shows, the deputy First Minister is using her position in government to try to conceal the truth.
“Emma Little-Pengelly called this episode ‘hugely politically embarrassing’. And so it is.
“If the DUP return to power wasn’t built on lies, it wouldn’t be so embarrassing to tell the truth.”