Election result will send message via NI protocol: Donaldson

A victory for Sinn Fein in the Stormont Assembly election will send the message that it is “business as usual” with Northern Ireland protocol, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has said.

The DUP leader was addressing a rally in Bangor, Co Down, where he said the UK government and the EU now recognize the protocol needed to be changed.

Speaking ahead of the rally, Sir Jeffrey said: “Trade unionism is united against protocol. This must continue to be our priority.

“There are too many divisions. This election will be won and lost on transfers.

“I want every trade unionist to give their first preference to the DUP, but then I want them to move on and move on to the other pro-union candidates.”

The rally is the latest in a series that has taken place across Northern Ireland outlining unionist and loyalist opposition to the post-Brexit protocol, which provides for additional checks on goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain. Brittany.

It is strongly contested by Unionists as the boundary in the Irish Sea.

Earlier this year the DUP pulled out of the Stormont executive in protest at the protocol and the party pledged not to return to government after Thursday’s election until their concerns are resolved .

Sir Jeffrey continued: ‘The protocol has driven up transport costs between GB and NI by 27 per cent and placed a boundary between us and our most important trading partner – Britain and jeopardized our supply of medicines. in the midst of a health pandemic.

“We have made progress in convincing many of the merits of our case. From a position of non-renegotiation, the EU and the government now recognize the need for change.

“The government knows that the protocol does not enjoy Unionist support and Brussels cannot be convinced that the protocol has cast its shadow over Northern Ireland’s political arrangements.

“If Sinn Fein wins this election, the message in London, Dublin and Brussels will continue as usual with protocol.”

The meeting was also addressed by TUV chief Jim Allister as well as Baroness Kate Hoey and former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib, who are part of a group that have taken legal action against the protocol, which must be heard by the Supreme Court.

They also spoke at an anti-protocol rally held earlier today in Ballymena, County Antrim.

Mr Allister told the Co Antrim rally that there could be no return of the Stormont power-sharing executive until the protocol was scrapped.

A number of Loyal Order groups marched through Ballymena before several hundred people gathered in the town center to hear speeches.

Mr Allister said: “We have to bring the lying Prime Minister who forced this unfair protocol on us to the point where he has to make a choice.

“And the leverage we have is to make the Prime Minister choose: do you want to save the protocol, or do you want to save Stormont?

“You can’t have both.

“And the reason I say you can’t have both is very simple: Stormont’s price is to implement protocol and that’s a price no trade unionist can pay or ever should have. pay.”

He added: ‘The basic principle of the protocol is that Britain is a foreign country and that Northern Ireland, in trade terms, is an integral part of the EU on what will be the island of Ireland. economically integrated.

“The declaration of Britain as a ‘third country’ or foreign country goes to the very heart of the Union.

“It is not surprising that the Court of Appeal accepted that the protocol made article 6 of the Acts of the Union subject – the very basis of the economic union of the Union.”

Lady Hoey said: “I think people are angry in the pro-union community.

“I think we are angry at the way Northern Ireland has been treated by our own government, but also particularly the way the Irish government and the European Union have agreed to do what they can. to distinguish Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom.

“I think we all know how the protocol separated Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, the principle of consent that was so crucial to the Belfast/Good Friday deal, which many of us voted for .

“Now how betrayed we feel that the principle of consent has been rejected by our own government and by a European Union that has used Northern Ireland to punish the rest of the UK.

“The price of Brexit for Members of the European Parliament will be Northern Ireland. Well, we’re not going to let that happen.

“None of us want to go back to terrible days of violence, but we cannot have a situation where our government ignores the majority community in Northern Ireland.”

Referring to Thursday’s election in Stormont, Mr Habib said: ‘We need to have a Unionist majority in Stormont, we need to use that Unionist majority to bring down Stormont.

“There can be no Stormont as long as the protocol exists.

“If we get that Unionist majority, it’s up to you to hold those politicians to account, to make sure they do what they promised, which is not to allow the executive to train and to ensure that Stormont is not reformed until the protocol goes. .

“You can’t have Stormont and protocol, protocol has to come first.”