Statement by TUV leader Jim Allister:-
“The blatant lies of the PM at the Lambeg Cola Cola plant, when he oversold the Windsor Framework as the end of the border in the Irish Sea, are now exposed for all to see.
“Recognising that because of the unaltered Art 164 of the Withdrawal Agreement, which expressly forbids any change to “the essential events” of the Protocol, TUV called it right when it dubbed the tinkering as the ‘Windsor Whitewash’. No matter how much the Prime Minister lied and others dithered and equivocated, it was abundantly clear that the Irish Sea Border stayed, that we remained in the EU’s single market for goods and under its Customs Code and, thus, GB was to continue to be designated a foreign country whose goods must be checked when entering the EU territory of Northern Ireland.
“As a colonial rule taker we remain subject to foreign law, jurisdiction and court. And all this for the political purpose of ensuring economic alignment, as a constitutional stepping stone, with the Republic.
“None of this has changed, indeed the recently published government guidance on the functioning of the Irish Sea border both confirms the reality of what HMG lied about and our detachment from GB. Even the supposedly easier ‘green lanes’ operate exclusively under EU law and oversight.
“To have to even be in a ‘trusted trader scheme’ to trade within your own country is confirmation in itself of the constitutional wedge that is driving us apart.
“The practical and constitutional detriment of the Windsor Whitewash is matched only the folly of those who profess allegiance to the Union, but who want us to implement its destruction through operating what now must and can only be a Union-dismantling Stormont.
“To operate Stormont is to implement the very Protocol which itself, according to the Supreme Court, put Art 6 of the Acts of Union into suspension. To be a Protocol implementer is to ensure that Union-dismantling suspension is permanent.”