Former DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds has compared the current situation in Northern Ireland to that of “a colony”, arguing that the protocol means the people there are governed by EU rules without any representation in that body.
During a contentious debate in the House of Lords over the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, in which an amendment threatens to delay the legislation, Lord Dodds of Duncairn insisted the Bill is “necessary”.
He said the Northern Ireland Protocol “rips up the free trading arrangements enshrined in Article 6 of the Act of Union itself, it runs completely contrary to the cross-community arrangements which are at the heart of the Belfast Agreement, it is contrary to the consent principle, it upsets the delicate balance of the agreements and undermines the institutions of the very agreement that it was designed and purports to safeguard, and it negates democracy itself.
