Speaking to Strangford TUV in Comber on Monday evening JIm Allister said now was a time for Unionism to stand firm and neither be cajoled or browbeaten into a useless Protocol deal.
“If what emerges – and this is how it will be if the EU has maintained its negotiating mandate – is slightly easier enforcement of the Protocol, but Northern Ireland still subject to the EU’s Customs Code [as per Art 5(3)] and EU law [as per Art 5(4) & 13(4)], then nothing of constitutional significance has changed. Even the farce of token ‘consultation’ on the foreign laws we’d remain subject to would change nothing, because we would still be under laws made in a foreign legislature and overseen by a foreign court. All of which is incompatible with being an integral part of the U.K. It must be British laws not EU laws throughout the U.K.
“It is subjection to the EU’s Customs Code and laws which has put Art 6 of the Acts of Union into suspension. None of the kite-flying leaks would alter that. And all unionism would get for rolling over would be a Sinn Fein First Minister! Hardly much of a win!
“So, standing firm is the imperative, including facing up to the fact that access to the EU single market comes at the constitutionally unacceptable price of being both a supplicant rule taker of foreign laws we don’t make and can’t change and the inevitability of increasing divergence from GB and absorption into the stepping stone of an all-Ireland economy.
“Whatever others do, TUV will not be taking the knee to the Union-dismantling Protocol.”