TUV leader Jim Allister compares EU customs rules to colonial rule

By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA

TUV leader Jim Allister has compared the EU customs rules in effect in the North to colonial rule.

The North Antrim MP said also post-Brexit trade arrangements had damaged the union with Britain.

For years after the Brexit vote in 2016, the Irish Government lobbied against a hard trade border on the island of Ireland during EU-UK trade negotiations.

There has been concern within unionism about the so-called Irish Sea border implemented instead, and any friction it created, through additional paperwork and costs, on the movement of goods between Northern Ireland and Britain.

Speaking at the TUV conference in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, Mr Allister accused the DUP of “betraying this country and unionism” for its stance on Brexit trade rules.

Unionism was “not in a good place” and had been damaged due to the DUP’s “strategic blunders”, the MP added.

He said that the restoration of powersharing institutions in February last year, after being collapsed by the DUP in protest at the post-Brexit protocol, was “a watershed of surrender”.

“Make no mistake about it. The depleted union that we are now left with is one whereby that foundational guarantee of unfettered trade with GB, that which was rooted in the very foundation of the United Kingdom… it now is in suspension,” he said.

“The fundamental constitutional ramifications of that are immense, they cannot be exaggerated.

“Never let anyone pretend to you that our union is not depleted by the protocol, it inescapably is.

“Because in law, the protocol is now supreme to our very Acts of Union.

“Supreme to laws made by the sovereign parliament of the United Kingdom and we, in this part of the UK, are subject to a foreign customs code, the customs code of the EU, that decrees that GB, the other part of our nation, is a foreign country.

“And therefore its goods passing to us have to pass through the EU’s international, full-blown customs border in the Irish Sea? That’s why I say our union has been depleted.”

He accused the DUP of having “betrayed the cause with lies and deception”.

“Let’s never forget those brazen lies, for they are the undoing of our Union:- the Irish Sea border is gone – a deliberate lie; zero checks, zero paperwork – a flagrant falsehood; the green lane is no more – a lie concealed in a mere change of name; the Union is safe – just like the Irish Sea border is gone, I suppose.”

Mr Allister also said the mechanism allowing Northern Ireland to object to post-Brexit trading arrangements, through a vote of the Stormont Assembly, was “phoney”.

MLAs voted in December to extend current arrangements for another four years, by 48 votes to 36.

While criticising the lack of reaction, Mr Allister compared the arrangements to “colonial rule”.

“There was no response when the votes were cast for four more years of colonial rule.

“What is a colony other than an area ruled by someone else’s laws that those who are ruled by them don’t make and can’t change.

“That’s exactly, exactly the position we’re in in Northern Ireland, an EU colony by any other name.”