Statement by TUV East Belfast Assembly candidate John Ross:
“Mrs Long on Good Morning Ulster has stated that she has not encountered the Irish Sea border on the doors in East Belfast over the past six months. This is an incredible claim. I don’t know what doors Mrs Long has been knocking but there mustn’t have been anybody home.
“The good people of East Belfast are well informed and they know that the Protocol was introduced to irrevocably change the constitutional position of Northern Ireland and push the province into an all-island economy.
“The good people of East Belfast also know that the Irish Sea Border did not happen by chance but it is the outworkings of a prolonged campaign by the ‘rigorous implementers’ in the SDLP, Sinn Fein and the Alliance party to overturn the democratic result of the Brexit referendum.
“Moreover, East Belfast has not forgotten that for the last year the DUP have built the Poots’ Posts and spent much of the year implementing the Irish Sea border.
“I hope that in a few weeks we hear an update from Mrs Long and others about the reaction to them on the doors in East Belfast. They will get a surprise when they finally reach the doors with people at home because the response that I have had is clear: East Belfast wants action on the Protocol.
“I am the only candidate in East Belfast who does not speak with a forked tongue on the Protocol. My opposition to the Protocol isn’t just at election time but it is all the time.
“Unlike Alliance who ignore the issue, the UUP who have run away from Protocol rallies and the DUP who implemented the Protocol for more than a year I will be standing shoulder to shoulder, with the good people of East Belfast, when they exercise their democratic right of peaceful protest in opposition to the Protocol and will continue that opposition until the Sea Border is removed.”