Speaking as guest speaker at the Twelfth demonstration in Broughshane, TUV leader Jim Allister congratulated the Orange Order on its “unwavering and necessary” stand against Irish language legislation, as reaffirmed in its third resolution. “The Order has stood strong on this issue when others, who should know better, would have faltered. That is one of the strengths of the Order: it can speak with grassroots authority and to effect, as we saw over the Maze Shrine and latterly over the Irish language. Principle before personal ambition is always a good guide.”
Mr Allister went on to review the failure of the Stormont institutions, arguing there was a very basic reason why Stormont as presently configured would never work: “put at its simplest, Sinn Fein is not there to make Northern Ireland work, so any system dependent for its existence on the grace and favour of Sinn Fein is never going to work. Only a coalition of the willing stands any chance. So, clinging to the failures of the past and seeking only to resuscitate that which can never work is a fools errand. If Stormont can’t be reformed – and I see no such efforts – then, we must have government which in those circumstances can only be British Rule from Westminster.”
Finally, Mr Allister turned his attention to Brexit. “Over the past week we have witnessed the shameful betrayal and neutering of Brexit as voted for by the British people. The toadying to Brussels that has hallmarked Mrs May’s approach from the beginning came to its grovelling fruition this week with climbdown on the essentials of complete leaving of the Single Market and the Customs Union. By agreeing to accept the EU rule book on goods and agriculture – rules we cannot influence or change and which will be interpreted exclusively by the European Court of Justice – the Prime Minister has embraced for the UK the essence of a vassal state – living under someone else’s laws and court.
“I’m sure I don’t need to remind Orangemen that at the heart of the Glorious Revolution was the repudiation by this great nation of obeisance to a foreign potentate.”