We need to elect leaders who see the danger of Irish Sea border

The recent rallies organised to show united unionist opposition to the NI Protocol have offered a much needed morale boost for many in the pro-union community.

They have also presented ordinary people and business owners with a platform where they can share their personal experiences on the destructive economic and constitutional consequences which the protocol’s implementation has so far had.

However any unity of purpose between the unionist parties will be impossible to sustain unless it is also accompanied by an agreed strategy.

Despite public shows of unity and encouragements to offer preference votes to all unionist candidates in the fourth-coming election, the different approaches taken by the parties remain irreconcilable.

Whilst the TUV and DUP advocate refusing to cooperate with the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement, the Ulster Unionists have described such a tactic as ‘madness’. Instead they advocated the creation of new cross border body to actually help implement the protocol!

This policy must be considered against the general awareness in unionism that its long term fortunes are dependent on whether they can remove the Irish Sea border. As such how will offering preference votes to elect Ulster Unionists effectively contesting the election on a policy, which in practical terms constitutes reluctant acceptance, stand to benefit the union?

Many anti-protocol campaigners will also be reluctant to offer any preference votes to the DUP given its cooperation so far with the protocol’s implementation and the ongoing lack of clarity from its leadership. Sir Jeffrey Donaldson says that it cannot ‘be business as normal’ in the assembly until the protocol is ‘sorted out’? But what does this mean in practical terms?

In the coming weeks grassroots unionists should resist attempts to be emotionally blackmailed into giving preference votes to all unionists candidates as a matter of right.

Instead, I would encourage all unionists to contact their local candidates and demand they offer a public assurance that they will not support the restoration of power sharing until NI leaves the EU on the same terms as rest of the UK.

The union’s long term survival does not necessarily depend on electing as many people who simply run on a ‘unionist ticket’. But rather by electing those who both understand the constitutional danger of having any form of Irish Sea border and are prepared to sacrifice any public office they win to remove it.

Kirk McDowell B.Sc, Belfast BT5

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