Latest news with #ActofUnion1707
Belfast Telegraph
05-07-2025
- Business
- Belfast Telegraph
Jim Allister rages at NI Protocol as ‘building block to Irish unity' during Glasgow Twelfth
He said the very substance and existence of the United Kingdom was at risk because of the NI Protocol and Windsor Framework as NI now shares identical 'foreign laws' with the Republic of Ireland. The Windsor Framework was agreed between the government and EU in 2023 following unionist concerns over trade barriers under their original post-Brexit deal, the Northern Ireland Protocol. Allister has previously said the framework was "the original protocol by another name". Speaking in Glasgow he said the constitutional basis of Scotland's membership of the UK, the Act of Union 1707, and Northern Ireland's, the Act of Union 1800, are identical in form and substance. 'Each is built on the twin pillars of a political union and an economic union,' he told those in attendance. 'Article 3 of each of our Acts of Union affirm a political union through a single sovereign parliament for the whole nation; and each of our Articles 6 guarantee unfettered trade between and within all parts of the Kingdom. 'It is the latter, of course, that has been trashed by the union-dismantling Windsor Framework, because it fetters trade with NI by establishing an EU border to entrap NI within its territory and control. 'Whereas England, Scotland and Wales left the EU, Northern Ireland was left behind under its Customs Code and in its single market for goods, meaning in 300 areas of law we are governed by foreign laws we don't make and can't change.' He described it as 'a democratic outrage' and 'a deliberate building block for Irish unity' as NI is now governed in those 300 areas by the identical laws as the Republic of Ireland. Mr Allister added: 'And as these are the laws that shape our trade and economy they are inexorably building the stepping stone of an all-Ireland economy, which always was the intended design of the Windsor Framework. 'Hence, why anyone worthy of the name 'unionist' rejects the Windsor Framework in all its parts.'
The National
21-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Tory MSP fumes as expert says Scotland 'not a partner in a union'
Professor Robert Black, emeritus professor in Scots law at Edinburgh University, argued that Unionist assumptions about the creation of Great Britain under the Acts of Union were wrong in a speech over the weekend. But his comments were met with fury from Scottish Tory MSP Stephen Kerr, who blasted the fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh's comments as 'irrelevant'. Kerr shared a screenshot of The National's story on Twitter/X with the caption: 'This is what the nationalists are now resorting to. Trying to rewrite ... the Act of Union 1707. READ MORE: Scotland 'absorbed into England' by Acts of Union, says top legal expert 'An out of date ideology which is irrelevant – yet still the SNP cling to it and any success for them promotes this sort of thinking.' Prof Black told the Scottish Sovereignty Research Group's conference on Saturday that Scotland had been 'absorbed' into England by the Acts of Union, contrary to the prevailing political view that 1707 marked the creation of a new state called Great Britain. (Image: David Cheskin) He said: 'No honest and conscientious lawyer can look at what happened in the first decade of the 18th century to the institutions of government north and south of the Tweed and reach the conclusion that the pre-existing states of Scotland and England both ceased to exist and that a new state emerged, phoenix-like out of the ashes. 'The evidence, the facts on the ground support no judgment other than that Scotland ceased to exist as a state in international law and was absorbed into a still-extant England, cosmetically renamed 'Great Britain'. READ MORE: Keir Starmer apologises to Welsh MP after attack during PMQs "Scotland's legal status today, more than three centuries later, is therefore not that of a partner in a union – unequal, perhaps, but a union nevertheless – but is that of territory absorbed into a larger country.' Prof Black, a distinguished legal expert who laid the groundwork for the Lockerbie bombing trial in 2001, did not delve into the political consequences of his comments but they were perceived as a landmark moment by his hosts. The Scottish Sovereignty Research Group is allied with Liberation Scotland, which is attempting to have Scotland 'decolonised' by the United Nations.
