Any unionist leader who accepts Windsor Whitewash is breaking Ulster Day pledge, TUV leader Jim Allister tells public meeting

At a public meeting organised by the party in Lisburn Orange Hall tonight (Thursday), Mr Allister took the opportunity to issue a reminder of the pledge made on September 28, 2021.

He said: “On Ulster Day 2021 all unionist leaders united to ‘affirm our opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol, its mechanisms and structures and reaffirm our unalterable position that the Protocol must be rejected and replaced by arrangements which fully respect Northern Ireland’s position as a constituent and integral part of the United Kingdom’.

“Any unionist leader who at any stage accepts the Windsor Framework is inescapably accepting the mechanisms and structures of the Protocol, because these are unaltered by the Windsor Whitewash – nor can they be, because the legal constraints under which Windsor was agreed prohibits any change to the essential elements of the Protocol (Art 164 Withdrawal Agreement)”

He said anyone unionist leader accepting the framework was also “abandoning the promised ‘unalterable position’ of rejection of the Protocol, because it continues in all its essential parts” and “giving up on the undertaking to accept only arrangements which fully respect Northern Ireland’s position as a constituent and integral part of the United Kingdom”.

Mr Allister said: “To accept the Windsor cloaked Protocol is to accept foreign rule and a foreign court through the foreign sovereignty of the EU and its Customs Code which holds GB to be the foreign territory. Such is to accept that NI will never again be an integral part of the U.K. You can’t be an integral part of the U.K. and be ruled not by British laws but foreign colonial laws. It’s as simple as that.

“So, I say to all who care about the Union, agreeing to implement the Protocol/Windsor through Stormont is not an option because the High Court in Rooney-v-Poots has made it very clear that to be in an Executive requires you by legal obligation to enforce the Protocol and its Irish Sea border. Not an option for any who took the Ulster Day pledge.”

The public meeting organised by the TUV in Lisburn follows well attended meetings in Markethill, Castlereagh and Portadown. Another meeting is planned for Ballymoney.