DUP must cripple Stormont to remove Irish Sea border: Bryson
■ Loyalist urges disruption of government in new book ■ He says protocol can be opposed using legal process
LOYALIST Jamie Bryson is calling on the DUP to make Stormont “ungovernable” until the Irish Sea border is removed.
In a new book on the subject of Brexit he claims that the sea border must be challenged, not through street protests, but by disrupting the workings of government.
“The DUP and the Ulster Unionists are part of the Executive. Ironically, the DUP have responsibility for the department charged with implementing the sea border,” he said.
“The first protest against the Northern Ireland protocol should be a deliberate DUP campaign to frustrate and impede the implementation of checks and infrastructure.
“They must use every lever available to them within the structures of the Assembly and their ministerial offices.
“The real route to triggering Article 16 is not via protests or civil disobedience, but rather by making the system of government unworkable from within.”
But the loyalist, whose book Brexit Betrayed is published by Amazon, said he suspected that the DUP would meekly implement the protocol.
“Their recent musings about ‘opportunities’ in the protocol leads to the inevitable conclusion that the DUP fully intend to eschew any real effort to resist the Irish Sea border in favour of becoming its chief implementers,” he said.
Mr Bryson said his book was a series of articles penned from the 2016 referendum to the end of the transition period.
“It’s the first published book from a unionist/loyalist perspective on Brexit,” he added.
He insisted that he did not regret voting for Brexit, and he claimed that the problem for loyalists lay in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
“It was sold to unionism as a settlement and thus it depoliticised a generation.
“It was simultaneously portrayed as a process to nationalists which energised and politicised a whole new generation of post98 nationalist activists.
“I believe the Irish Sea border will energise and politicise a new generation of unionists and loyalists,” he said.
“I am urging them to engage in a strategic offensive of ‘lawfare’ — using the legal process to wage war on the protocol and frustrate all-ireland harmonisation efforts.
“It is wholly understandable that a bubbling resentment boils within the unionist and loyalist psyche, flowing from the imposition of an Irish Sea border to appease the implied threats to peace, which emanated from nationalism and the Irish Government.”
The loyalist accused London of appeasing nationalism over Brexit and “cutting unionism adrift and abandoning it into an economic united Ireland that doesn’t make for long-term stability”.
PUP councillor Dr John Kyle is on Belfast City Council’s Brexit committee and called for cooperation on Brexit.
“I think that Brexit is an evolving situation, I think that there are very negative consequences from the Irish Sea border,” he said.
But he added: “I also think it’s a time for cool heads and for business and politicians to work together to ensure the most efficient transport of goods between Northern Ireland and Great Britain in both directions.”
‘By their recent musings... the DUP fully intend to eschew any real effort to resist Irish Sea border’