Source: Traditional Unionist Voice – Northern Ireland
TUV leader Jim Allister told the ‘Glasgow Twelfth’ the very substance and existence of the United Kingdom was at risk because of the Protocol/Windsor Framework.
“The constitutional basis of your membership of the U.K., the Act of Union 1707, and Northern Ireland’s, the Act of Union 1800, are identical in form and substance. Each is built on the twin pillars of a political union and an economic union. Art 3 of each of our Acts of Union affirm a political union through a single sovereign parliament for the whole nation; and each of our Articles 6 guarantee unfettered trade between and within all parts of the Kingdom.
“It is the latter, of course, that has been trashed by the union-dismantling Windsor Framework, because it fetters trade with NI by establishing an EU border to entrap NI within its territory and control.
“Whereas England, Scotland Wales left the EU, Northern Ireland was left behind under its Customs Code and in its Single market for goods, meaning in 300 areas of law we are governed by foreign laws we don’t make and can’t change. That is not just a democratic outrage, but a deliberate building block for Irish unity as NI is now governed in those 300 areas by the identical laws as the Republic of Ireland. And as these are the laws that shape our trade and economy they are inexorably building the stepping stone of an all-Ireland economy, which always was the intended design of the Windsor Framework.
“Hence, why anyone worthy of the name ‘unionist’ rejects the Windsor Framework in all its parts.
“In that rejection we ask for the support of our fellow citizens in Scotland who equally recognise threat to our Union when they see it, because you, like us, live under the blight of a separatist First Minister, though you are spared the obscenity of being told there was no alternative to the murder of your kith and kin.
“Going forward, there is common cause in rebuilding and restoring our Union, so that the natural affinity between Scotland and Northern Ireland – which is reflected in what we celebrate today – is accentuated, not blocked with preposterous trade barriers and the heavy hand of EU colonial rule, from which you have been spared, but by which we are still benighted.
“Your covenanting forefathers knew the strength and value of covenanting together to defend what mattered; may we together with determination covenant to not rest until all our nation is free of the foreign rule of Brussels diktats.”