Tonight TUV leader Jim Allister will tell an anti-Protocol rally in Enniskillen that implementing the Protocol is the greatest act of destruction of the Union that any Unionist minister could take.
“The iniquitous Protocol is dismantling the Union before our eyes. The High Court has ruled that it has already repealed a key part of the Acts of Union, Article 6 – the Article which created an economic United Kingdom.
“Its purpose and result of its implementation is to not only separate us economically from GB but equally to build the stepping stone of an economic all-Ireland. It is a vehicle of indisputable constitutional change. Hence, the enthusiasm for it among the pan-nationalist front.
“It is, therefore, beyond logic as to why any unionist would not only aid and abet its implementation, but preside over it. Yet, tragically, that is precisely what the DUP through Edwin Poots is doing. I call him out again for his dangerous folly.
“Without implementation , the Protocol becomes a dead letter.
“But in Edwin Poots pitiful justification lies a searching question for Unionism. Poots, the border builder, says he must do so because the law requires him as a minister to do so. Deconstruct that claim and you discover that according to this DUP minister the price of Stormont is implementing the Protocol!
“So, if the price of Stormont is now not only IRA/Sinn Fein in government, but also the self-destruction of the Protocol, then, why is any unionist prioritising retention of institutions which now necessitate active implementation of that which is dismantling the Union?
“Only the dimmest, or those who see no danger in the Protocol, could see sense in such folly.”