Beware the games London is playing over the NI Protocol

The protocol treats Great Britain as a foreign country within Northern Ireland’s trade, subjecting us to foreign laws we don’t make and can’t change,

With regard to the government and its NI Protocol Bill, these three facts are as informative as they are concerning:

l The government is pinning hopes on fresh negotiations with a European Union which doggedly refuses to change its negotiating mandate from mere better implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol, while resolutely refusing to renegotiate its fundamentals.

Thus these negotiations are incapable of producing an outcome acceptable to unionism as they, under these terms, can not recover the EU’s ill-gotten sovereignty over Northern Ireland. The secretary of state’s contribution in yesterday’s News Letter (‘My priority is to see Stormont returned as soon as possible,’ September 27) gave little comfort that this is a government really seized of the imperative of the restoration of UK sovereignty — even his misguided priority of the return of unworkable devolution rather than remedying this fundamental sovereignty issue is concerning.

l Simultaneously with the government progressing its Protocol Bill it has introduced into Parliament the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill which provides for the removal of EU laws in GB, but not in NI.

Clause 1(5) is clear in excluding NI from the reach and effect of the Bill, leaving us to continue subject to EU laws, with 361 EU ‘legal acts’ adopted so far this year (to 5/9) which apply in NI under the protocol. Why is HMG passing legislation to liberate the UK from EU law but excluding NI, if it really intends to deliver us from the iniquitous protocol?

l Earlier this month, in a highly significant development, HMG argued in the Belfast High Court (in a judicial review challenge to Minister Poots belatedly directing an end to internal UK customs checks) that the relevant law (Regulation 2017/625) should be interpreted on the basis that, contrary to Article 6 of the Acts of Union, the United Kingdom is no longer in terms of trade a unitary state and that NI, consistent with the protocol, should be regarded as not included in UK territory when it comes to trade.

This is an astounding submission which, while it confirms everything I and others have said about the Union-dismantling nature of the protocol, also illustrates a government complicit in implementing the very protocol they would have us believe they oppose!

Every unionist, therefore should remain alert to political manoeuvrings and games which are going on in respect of the protocol, not least in our courts. At the end of November we will again see HMG’s disingenuous posturing exposed when in our Supreme Court it deploys arguments to actually prop up the protocol and resist the unionist challenge that it breaches our very Acts of Union.

So, now is very much a time to stay focussed and strong on the core sovereignty and constitutional issues at stake and to withstand all blandishments – including those from the secretary of state – to give up the Stormont leverage which is what to date has produced any movement from the government.

l Jim Allister KC MLA is TUV leader