Ulster Unionist Peer Lord Empey has highlighted the lack of proposals from the DUP in almost three and a half years of Brexit discussions, other than to seek to invoke in defence of the Union, the very Belfast Agreement which they once vowed to destroy.  

Lord Empey said:

“With regard to the Brexit process we have now reached the stage where the DUP are still searching for a policy, having had three and a half years to find one.

“The Ulster Unionist Party has put forward ideas in our recent paper and we are making a contribution in order to help find a workable and acceptable solution, but so far the DUP have put forward nothing and we are now very much at the eleventh hour.

“Many people have also been rather taken aback at recent comments from the DUP regarding the Belfast Agreement, recognising that the Backstop drives a coach and horses through the Agreement.  

“We have indeed come to a strange place when the DUP is now publicly defending an Agreement which they sought to destroy and did all they could to wreck, having finally realised that the only protection we now have is the Belfast Agreement.   

“Ulster Unionists will be particularly interested in the comments from Arlene Foster and Jeffrey Donaldson, given that they left the Ulster Unionist Party, supposedly because of the Belfast Agreement, yet are now to be found invoking it in the Unionist cause against the Backstop.”

“Indeed in less than a fortnight Arlene Foster is scheduled to appear at a fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference which is billed as ‘Abolishing the Backstop: preserving the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.’ That should be a very interesting session indeed coming from someone who left the Ulster Unionist Party because of her opposition to it.”