M ay backstop no better than what We have now: DUP
THE DUP has strongly rejected suggestions that it should have agreed to Theresa May’s backstop, which would have worked out as a better option than the current protocol.
Deputy leader Lord Dodds backed the party’s Westminster leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, who said that the backstop would have left Northern Ireland even more out on a limb.
Lord Dodds told the Belfast Telegraph: “Some people have mistakenly suggested that if
Theresa May’s backstop had been accepted, we could have avoided the problems we face today. Such an idea is wrong.
“The May backstop contained a regulatory border in the Irish Sea in exactly the same way as the protocol. Mrs May said that the rest of the UK would just tag along and keep its laws in step with the EU.
“That was not legally enforceable under the treaty and, politically, the Tory party would never have accepted such a scenario, as was demonstrated in the many rejections of her backstop by her own party.
“Likewise, the May backstop had Northern Ireland in EU customs union rules with a temporary add-on of Great Britain being tacked on. That would never have survived under May’s successor, even if it had squeaked through her own party.”
The DUP deputy leader insisted that the backstop would have led to Northern Ireland being eventually locked into a separate arrangement from Britain.
“Not a single unionist party in the Assembly supported the backstop because they could see it as being the prototype of exactly the same arrangements as we have today,” he said.
“It set in international law the principle that Northern Ireland would be subject to EU laws like the protocol.
“Fundamentally, regardless of what the parties in Northern Ireland thought, Mrs May’s deal
couldn’t even gain the support of her own party.
“The backstop would have led us to the same position as we are in today, just at a different speed.”
When asked if the backstop would have been preferable to the protocol, UUP leader Steve Aiken said: “Bearing in mind what everyone knows now, from both a constitutional and economic point of view, it would have been more beneficial for Northern Ireland for the whole of the UK to remain within the EU.”
Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry MP said: “It is baffling why all unionist parties rejected both a Uk-wide soft Brexit or the much more benign backstop, relative to the protocol, and instead facilitated a hard Brexit with all of the self-evident consequences.
“The single market and customs union are wrongly framed as some form of burden to Northern Ireland when, in practice, they are a huge opportunity.
“The backstop was only intended as an insurance and would disappear with the conclusion of a wider future relationship issue.
“It provided for a Uk-wide approach on customs which avoided many of the current problems being experienced with the protocol.”