Thread by @Macerty

If the DUP are in anyway sincere about negotiating a form of Brexit that would have obviated the need for a border in the Irish Sea, then why did they oppose the much softer Brexit deal agreed between Theresa May and the EU?

The fact is they didn’t and now they’re like a spoiled truculent child that returns to the table demanding a third option other than a soft or hard Brexit. They refuse to face the reality there are only two forms of Brexit neither of which are in the interests of Northern Ireland

However one is less damaging than the other. The DUP then temporarily jumped ship and then signed up to the other, namely a hard Brexit by rejecting the May deal.

The DUP then sold out the (NI) people a second time by subsequently forming a pact with Boris Johnson and his supposedly oven ready deal which turned out to be unfit for purpose and extremely detrimental to future of the NI peace process and the terms of the GFA.

Some form of backstop was all the more essential to protect Northern Ireland from the worst effects the hard Brexit. In came the Northern Ireland Protocol that protected Northern Ireland consumers from unregulated food supplies and enabled them to remain in the single market.

Unlike Scotland, Wales and England, this has been a welcome bonus for NI consumers and has opened up numerous exciting new trading opportunities across the whole island of Ireland that has seen the Northern Ireland economy significantly outperform its regional counterparts.

Yet despite all these benefits the DUP is doing its damnedest to pour cold water on the current situation by citing costs of checks on goods entering Northern Ireland.

What the DUP isn’t telling the Northern Ireland public is the much greater cost to our economy from the full impact of a hard Brexit that include many businesses failing that are already struggling under the effects of this Pandemic.

Without the (NI) Protocol in place, cross-border trade on the island of Ireland would be greatly affected. A land border with equally costly checks and impossible to control (over 300 miles long) is a non starter.

Uncontrolled smuggling and subsequent higher prices for consumers of Irish produce and EU goods would occur. The supply chain would suffer amid great political unrest. However the DUP doesn’t care about any of this!

Their only concern is to ringfence Northern Ireland into a future permanent arrangement with Britain irrespective of whether that arrangement either trading or constitutional is detrimental to the interests of the people of Northern Ireland.

Such an arrangement would be in direct contravention to the terms of the GFA where the principle of consent is required and just doesn’t apply to the present. Any major change requires the consent of the people not just the politicians.

To attempt to freeze that right of consent or cast it in stone is plainly wrong and cannot be moulded to suit a particular political narrative such as that of the DUP’s.

However the DUP insist on chipping away at the real purpose of the (NI) Protocol for its own poisoned political agenda that would see a land border on the island of Ireland without all the intended consequences unimaginable in its stark implications for peace and stability.

The Northern Ireland public need to see the DUP shannigans for what they are - another attempt to flout the rules of an already damaging Brexit to impose its own will on the people of Northern Ireland, usurp it’s democratic institutions of government and break international law

@threadreaderapp please unroll thanks