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DUP LEADER ARLENE Foster and senior party MPs are launching legal action challenging the Northern Ireland Protocol.
They will be joining other unionists from across the UK in judicial review proceedings unless alternative post-Brexit trade arrangements are put in place which secure their consent.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds, the party’s Westminster leader Jeffrey Donaldson and chief whip Sammy Wilson are backing Foster’s action in response to disruption of business through Irish Sea ports.
A separate group of DUP members has also engaged senior legal counsel to prepare for a series of challenges to the protocol.
The protocol was agreed by the European Union and UK to overcome one of the main sticking points in the Brexit withdrawal talks.
Northern Ireland remains in the single market for goods and applying EU customs rules at its ports.
The protocol moved the regulatory and customs border to the Irish Sea, with a series of checks, certifications, inspections and declarations now required on some goods being shipped into the North.
Foster said that “fundamental to the Act of Union is unfettered trade throughout the UK”.
“At the core of the Belfast Agreement was the principle of consent, yet the Northern Ireland Protocol has driven a coach and horses through both the Act of Union and the Belfast Agreement,” she said.
The move comes amid ongoing unionist and loyalist anger at new regulatory and customs processes required to bring goods into Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.
Nationalists and the Irish Government are committed to solving problems with the protocol keeping Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market but insist nothing must threaten the free-flow of commerce on the island of Ireland.
Nationalist SDLP leader and Foyle MP Colum Eastwood said: “The DUP’s legal action against the Ireland Protocol is ill-judged and will only further entrench the febrile political environment as well as creating further uncertainty for people and businesses.
“There will be few with sympathy for the argument that the protocol, which prevents a hard border in Ireland and guarantees dual market access for local businesses, breaches the Good Friday Agreement.”
Taoiseach Micheál Martin has urged the DUP to dial down the rhetoric and put politics aside.
Foster said: “Neither the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Northern Ireland Executive nor the people of Northern Ireland consented to the protocol being put in place or the flow of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland being impeded by checks.
“They certainly did not consent to the arrangements for those checks being determined by a power over which we have no democratic say.”
They are joining the legal challenge by peer Baroness Kate Hoey, Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister and former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib.
Allister said: “Whereas the protocol is doing immense damage to commerce and thus our economy, it is its pernicious constitutional damage which concerns us above all.
“Extended ‘grace periods’, derogations and easements will do nothing to ameliorate the protocol’s fundamental assault on our constitutional position.”
The separate DUP group has sought the legal opinion of constitutional law experts ahead of several potential High Court challenges in Belfast and London against the Government over the post-Brexit Irish Sea trading arrangements.
A party source involved in the initiative told the PA news agency that preparatory work on a “series of very significant legal challenges” is at an “advanced stage”.
“No stone will be left unturned in the pursuit of justice for the people of the Union,” the source said.
Unionists have argued that the protocol undermines the Act of Union and the Northern Ireland Act, which gives legislative effect to the 1998 Good Friday/Belfast Agreement which established devolved powersharing.
The DUP leadership has rolled out a five-point plan in recent weeks aimed at frustrating the operation of the protocol.
That campaign includes a boycott of North-South ministerial engagement on issues related to the contentious trading arrangements.
The party also initiated an online petition to secure a parliamentary debate on the protocol – the debate is due to take place at Westminster on Monday.
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So DUP insist that even though north voted against Brexit it should be respected and adhered to as a ‘ whole uk majority’ voted for it.
The same ‘ whole uk majority’ returned Boris with a massive mandate. Now DUP complain that the north hasn’t voted for the protocol.
Welcome to democracy DUP style.
@M Bowe: I often wonder if FF & FG had representation in the North of this island how would they fare in their confrontations with the DUP? Is it possible for FFG to enter candidates in this jurisdiction, do they have a will to do so and how would they be received by the political divide and could they do a good job? Just a thought.
@M Bowe: Even by DUP standards, that is glaringly myopic reasoning. There would have been no issues under the deal Theresa May struck, which of course the DUP voted against.
@Frank Cauldhame: FF were in talks with the SDLP a few years back about joining forces up North. No doubt FG would have no choice but to jump in bed with the DUP because when we eventually do have a United Ireland SF would automatically become the biggest Party in the newly formed State
@M Bowe: howling into the void, the DUP have never failed to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.
@Frank Cauldhame: FF and FG candidates wouldnt get many votes from Nationalist areas because nationalists remember well who came to their need when loyalists and British death squads terrorised their communities.
@David Garland & Seamus Donnelly:
Thanks for the response lads, I would have to agree with you both. David, Leo & Arlene eh, that’s almost as outrageous as FF & FG going into coalition…..
@David Garland: I doubt SF would. United Ireland is their raison d’etre. What use would they serve after that?
@Mr Snrub: People didnt vote for Sinn Fein in the last election because of their aspirations on a united Ireland they voted for them because they are sick of FF and FG’s miss managment of the country and the people up North voted for them because they took a stand against the DUPs involvement im the ash for cash scandal.
@M Bowe: You have to sit back and admire the DUP. They are quite incredible, the masters of double-think.
@M Bowe: Unionist democracy has always been a la carte
DUP The party that likes to say No.
@Christybhoy67: To be fair, it’s more of an involuntary tic. Think of Tourettes Syndrome, but where they make everyone else swear loudly. :)
DUP are fighting for their political lives… Dodds has already been rejected and has no political mandate, Arlene is in political trouble in Fermanagh south Tyrone a republican/nationalist stronghold … UK cannot reject the protocol as it is part of an international treaty and if they do they will end up out on a political limb and could lose their chairmanship of the G7 which Boris needs in order create some sort of political legitimacy. If it does happen there could be a return to violence or GB could cede the North altogether, remember this statelet is not even 100 years old and most people in the UK couldn’t care less about it and consider it more trouble than it’s worth, I think many people in the Republic may think the same
@Kevin50: muppet dup will never win against proctcol
@Brian Flavin: Particularly that there is a review tool build in to it. But they know that DUP will not ever have enough votes to overturn it.
@Adam Hernes: Even if Stormont did vote to overturn it, it’s not a devolved matter so how they vote can be seen as advisory only. This is an international treaty between Brussels and Westminster.
Peace!!! The only peace the DUP want is a piece of Ireland…
The DUP take Bigotry to levels beyond compare. So ironic they are hiding behind the Belfast (GFA) agreement when it suits them, they certainly didn’t support it back in 1997-98.
Unionism is reacting like a cornered rat as they know deep down this is another progress in the beginning of the end for them in Ireland and they will fight to the bitter end.
They are a minority on this Island and the UK government considers them expendable. This makes them unpredictable and very spiteful. Roll on Scottish independence as it will be another nail in their coffin for their stranglehold on power up north.
The DUP didn’t even sign up to the Good Friday agreement. But they did sign up to Brexit, which was going to result in one sort of border or another. And it’s easier to do port checks than have them along 300 land crossings.
@Mick Tobin: The “Belfast agreement” as they call it ,they can’t bring themselves to call it by its proper name, The “good Friday agreement”because that would be a nod to catholicism.
@Conor Noonan: Do you really think that Catholicism has a monopoly on the name ‘Good Friday’?
The DUP . The political party whose mission statement reads . “Happy and proud to sit back and watch our world burn “
@Conor Flood: that was cash for ash
Good man Arlene, no surrender
Urgh.. the DUP loves to cherry pick democracy. Sickos.
Hilarious!!
“A power over which we have no democratic say” wow it only took 99 years but they finally understand the concept.
Funny thing is, this situation is not even on the political agenda in Westminster, the UK establishment literally couldn’t give a toss about Arlene and her mates. It’s actually comical listening to her thinking the world revolves round her little bigoted parallel universe.
The DUP has never cared about the welfare of Northern Ireland, in fact it doesn’t care much about it’s unionist/loyalist following. The DUP only cares about the DUP.
Without journslistic scrutiny it has been allowed to behave with impunity – numerous scandals, close association with loyalist death squads, and disastrous Brexit policy.
To counter falling support the DUP has adopted Trump-style tactics – encouraging civil unrest and threatening to even bring down Stormont.
It’s their own fault for scuppering the Theresa May agreement.
@John O: May brokered the best possible deal, if there any movement here it will be back to that deal.
Probably should have thought of this before now. DUP – all about tactics but not real strategy.
Talk to your mate Boris, he made the deal with the EU….
It must be exhausting being them.
@Larry Whack: its exhausting hearing about them
They are in election mode and are being squeezed from both sides, the Traditional Unionist Voice on one side and the UUP and even the Alliance Party on the other.
So they are doing what they do best shouting and screaming.
Democracy, she is having a laugh. They never believed in it before now.
Why doesn’t she put it to the people to decide
@Michael Mcloughlin: Brecit and its spinoff NIP is not a devolved matter.
@Michael Mcloughlin: Because Brexit and its spinoff NIP is not a devolved matter.
DUP = Despicable Unpleasant Party
The best argument of all against Boris’s tunnel has only 3 letters in it.
DUP are in election mode. They also launch a five point plan back in 2016 when Arlene was homing her leadership skills in the famous ash for cash scandal.
The DUP supported Britain’s exit from the European Union. Arlene was confident the party never risked losing traditional supporters, particularly those with backgrounds in agriculture and business. Insisting it was wrong to assume that all those in the farming or business communities were pro-EU.”I hear differing views from farmers and I hear differing views from businesspeople,” she said on the election trail.
Five years later the DUP’s five point plan is around fighting the very agreement forged between UK and 27 other European countries that was supported by the DUP. Somehow unionism is again under threat. Loyalists preparing to protest in Dublin if their demands are not met.
The DUP are a complete shambles and we all know that but my question is, why is there a picture of Steve Bruce with a wig for this article??
This reminds me of that scene in the pilot of Sledgehammer where the purse snatcher beats himself up.
@Amiga Ireland: can’t thumb that more than once….and you have just sorted tonight’s entertainment!
All the DUP want is trouble .. not one positive person among them.. very sad actually.
Time to challenge the Act of Union?
@Caroline Otoole: Was the Act of Union even legal?
DUP should take a case against those that voted for Brexit ..
…. and of course not against those in the DUP that voted for Brexit.
The solution was simple in the seventies and it’s still simple today, NI is incorrigible and a hard, hard border for fifty years or so might encourage them to sort things out. Meanwhile we get on with life. Too much time, money and effort has been wasted on this failed pimple on the rump of Britain.
I know a good Queen’s Council Jim Allister TUV deluded people them Unionists
“Brexit has driven a coach and horses through both the Act of Union and the Belfast Agreement”
Fixed it for you Arlene.
Fab kick to touch, keep it away from Stormont & leave the hot potato with the wigs.
Brill.
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