Baroness Kate Hoey has argued politicians returning to Stormont under a revised trading pact would be like Nazi collaborators under the Vichy regime in wartime France.
The Northern Irish Brexit supporter and former Labour MP said: “There are people in Northern Ireland, leading politicians, who say, and it’s true, that Northern Ireland has now become a form of colony. The EU’s first kind of colony.
“If Stormont goes back with the present Windsor Framework, they in fact would be almost like what happened during the war with the Vichy government, where all those MLAs would be collaborators with a kind of colonial government.
Read more: What is the Stormont Brake? The new veto in the Windsor Framework deal
“Taking foreign laws from a foreign legislature, governing much of our economy in Northern Ireland and keeping us in a foreign customs code whereby GB, Great Britain, our country, where our capital is, becomes a third country, becomes our foreign country, it’s just not acceptable.”
Baroness Hoey was speaking as the DUP moved to block the Stormont brake, a key part of the revamped post-Brexit trading arrangements known as the Windsor Framework, with a fatal motion in the House of Lords.
The attempt by the DUP to block a key part of the revised deal for Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements was heavily defeated in the House of Lords.
Peers rejected by 227 votes to 14, majority 213, a fatal motion to regulations implementing the so-called Stormont brake, which would enable politicians in Belfast to trigger a veto over the imposition of new EU rules in the region.
It comes after the statutory instrument passed comfortably in the Commons last week despite DUP opposition and a Tory backbench rebellion that included former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, with Labour and other opposition parties backing it.
The brake mechanism was a central plank of the Windsor Framework, which is designed to deal with issues in the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Former first minister of Northern Ireland Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee responded to calls for the DUP to return to government by pointing out that Sinn Fein have done the same thing before, and arguing the return to power-sharing must be “fair”.
She said: “For three years, the people of Northern Ireland were kept out of government by Sinn Fein demanding language rights.
“We didn’t have government to deal with health issues, to deal with budget issues in our schools, all of those issues – it was incredibly frustrating.
“I want devolution to return to Northern Ireland, as someone who held the post of first minister, but it must be done on a fair and sustainable basis.”
The proposed fatal motion argues the regulations “rather than eliminating the democratic deficit, they make provision for law to be made for Northern Ireland in 300 policy areas by the European Union, in whose parliament the people of Northern Ireland have no representation”.
It also states the Stormont brake provision would only exist to laws regarding product regulation where there is “a significant and lasting effect” – and does not cover areas such as VAT, state aid, customs or electricity.
In addition, the motion claims even if the assembly opposes new EU legislation affecting Northern Ireland, it could still be “ignored” by the UK Government.
Former leader of the SDLP Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick argued that the “greatest lack of democracy in Northern Ireland is the lack of an assembly, an executive, a North South Ministerial Council, a British-Irish Council – and I implore the DUP, please get back into Government and please make sure that the Windsor Framework can work.
“Because the people of Northern Ireland are currently facing very high waiting lists for health, a crumbling education system, budgets that have not been defined, because there is no Government in place.”
She added that people in Northern Ireland were “fed up with the lack of political institutions” and the fact that decisions are therefore left to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Chris Heaton-Harris, who was looking on in the debate in the House of Lords.
Labour former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Hain said: “I do worry about the vacuum that has opened up, because politics is not functioning.
“When politics doesn’t function in Northern Ireland, then darker forces move in.”
Both Lord Hain and Lady Ritchie raised several concerns about the functioning of the Stormont brake, however, including the potential for an “inbuilt minority veto”.
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