Jim Allister: Ruth Dudley Edwards has ignored two points of vital importance in her column in support of the Windsor Framework

Ruth Dudley Edward’s recitals of support for the Windsor Framework in Tuesday’s News Letter (‘Northern Ireland has lots of talent and this deal could unlock it,’ March 7, see link below) ignore two matters of immense legal, political and constitutional significance.

1. The Windsor deal makes no alteration of substance to the protocol, nor could it, because of the legal framework within which it arises, namely, Art 164 of the Withdrawal Agreement. Art 164 is emphatic: there can and will be no changes to the “essential elements” of the Protocol. Tinkering only is what is permitted and tinkering only is what we got – still under a foreign customs code, within a foreign single market, subject to all attendant foreign laws and ECJ adjudications.

2. To accept the deal is to accept that never again will Northern Ireland be a full part of the United Kingdom because we would be set irreversibly in the same and increasingly diverging economic orbit and control as the Republic. United Ireland, not United Kingdom would be the trajectory.

Advocacy of being in the EU single market for goods relies on subjugating sovereignty for claimed economic benefit (which tellingly Rishi Sunak rejects for GB), but with no thought to the inevitable detachment of NI as GB diverges. For those who cherish the Union being in the EU single market is not a matter of economic advantage but of constitutional detriment.

Jim Allister KC, TUV leader (link to Ruth Dudley Edward column below)

Ruth Dudley Edwards: NI has lots of talent and the protocol deal could unlock it