New Year Message from TUV leader Jim Allister:
“2016 will go down in our nation’s history as the year when the people rose up in the EU referendum to retake control of their destiny. 1916 was our nation’s year of sacrifice; 2016 was our year of liberation from the shackles of Brussels. An uprising of true patriots; a bloodless revolution that will set our nation on course to be great again. Spending our own money, deciding our own laws, being subject to our own courts, controlling our own borders and making trade deals that suit us.
“Part of the challenge of 2017 is to ensure there is no backsliding on Brexit. Our leaving here in Northern Ireland must be no less emphatic or evident than anywhere else in the UK. We joined as one nation, we leave as one nation!
“2016 started with all the synthetic hype of a supposed “Fresh Start” for Stormont. It ends in tatters, with all the inherent greed, cronyism and self-serving arrogance well exposed.
“The swamp of Stormont has revealed multiple scandals of which the SIF slush fund and the monstrous Renewable Heating swindle are the most notorious. The failure of the author of this Squander made in Stormont, Mrs Foster, to face up to her culpability and responsibility only adds to the scandal. The extent to which the public purse is being ripped off by Stormont incompetence is astounding.
“Continuing to drain the swamp will remain a major focus for TUV in 2017.
“Just as TUV’s persistent calls for an Opposition were ultimately vindicated, so our relentless expose of the unworkability of mandatory coalition is being borne out by the parlous shambles that passes for government at Stormont.
“Should the Sinn Fein/DUP cabal – despite the self-interest that glues it together – finally implode in 2017, then, there is no point in trying to again stick together the fragments of failure. Instead, Stormont’s executive functions should be suspended till there is a readiness to embrace the only form of devolution capable of working, namely, that based on voluntary, not mandatory, coalition. In the interim Direct Rule ministers should replace the Executive, but, crucially, the Assembly should continue as the lawmaking body, thereby retaining local democratic control.
“The people of Northern Ireland are entitled to good and stable government. As the current crisis again demonstrates, they will never get it with this present failed system. So, out with the old and in with the new.”