Change the Protocol

I did not vote for the final Agreement with the EU for three reasons. The  first was all my experience of the EU taught me if you do sign an Agreement with them they ceaselessly try to enforce it selectively and in a biased way against you. It behaves badly to all its neighbours and tries to boss them as if they were member colonies of the project. Secondly I thought the NI Protocol a mistake . Thirdly I wanted to end all EU say over our fish. On fish and the Protocol the government tried to assure MPs these were provisional or transitory arrangements which would be changed. The Protocol contains a clause to allow alteration and the fishing agreement was transitional.

As I expected the EU has sought to use the Protocol as a battering ram against our U.K. Union or as a device to keep the whole U.K. prisoner of the single market and its rules. The EU always sides with the nationalists in Northern Ireland and with the Republic of Ireland as an EU member state in a way which continuously undermines the Good Friday Agreement. That  peace settlement in NI requires the consent of both the nationalist and the Unionist communities  in NI to any political development or decision. The EU claims to want to uphold that Agreement yet does everything in its power and some things beyond its legal authority to alienate the Unionist community and split it from the U.K.

Unionists now refuse to form and work in a devolved government at Stormont all the time the EU interprets the Protocol in a one sided way to throttle GB/NI trade. The EU’s bigoted inflexibility, refusing to agree that GB/NI trade should not face any internal barriers crossing the Irish Sea has damaged business in NI and made Unionists feel cut off from the rest of the U.K.

The Secretary of State for NI and the PM must now legislate in the U.K. to make clear that GB/NI trade will be governed as England/Wales or London/Liverpool trade is governed, in accordance with those statements in the Protocol to respect our internal market. The U.K. legislation should include making  it an offence to seek to pass on any goods traded under the GB/NI provisions to the EU to uphold their main requirement in the Protocol.  This will be enforced by the U.K. as we currently enforce anti smuggling measures.