Debate contribution: Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers
Debate contribution by Mr Jim Allister KC on .
- MLA
- Mr Jim Allister KC
- Party at the time
- Traditional Unionist Voice
- Date
- 17 January 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Assembly Business
- Heading
- Election of Speaker and Deputy Speakers
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4177583
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I begin by joining in the tributes to the late David Hilditch and saluting his 25 years of unstinting service to the people of East Antrim. I convey my continuing sympathy to his family and friends. This recall reeks of insincerity. The pretence is that the motivation is to get this place and the institutions up and running again. Yet, there is a studious avoidance of this question: why have the institutions failed? There is no facing the cause of the collapse of the Belfast Agreement institutions, namely the protocol; no facing of that at all. It is a bit like the tantrum child whose favourite toy stops working. His father says, "Well, we'll try and fix it"; "No, just make it move. Just make it work"; "But I have to find out what's wrong with it"; "No, no, just make it work"; "But I have to open it up to see what needs fixed"; "No, no, just make it move". That is like this place: just get the institutions going without ever asking or addressing the question, "Why have the institutions failed?". Of course, they have failed fundamentally and unavoidably because of the protocol upsetting and dismantling the constitutional equilibrium of the very Belfast Agreement that some claim to support. Some are now so sold on their blind allegiance to the protocol that they are prepared to damn the institutions in order to save it. In fact, some have so worshipped at the shrine of the sacred cow of the protocol that they are now prepared to slaughter the sacred cow of power-sharing. Some of them have told us that the way forward is to get unionists out of government — to abandon unionist/nationalist power-sharing — to get the institutions up and going. Why? Because we must have the institutions to implement the protocol. That has become the abiding and real determination. The fundamental motivation of those who brought us here today is to break unionism. That is their motivation. It saddens me that the compliant Ulster Unionist Party is so soft on the dire constitutional consequences of the protocol that it is like putty in the hands of the protocol implementers. That is a great sadness. The motive is this: break unionism. How? By forcing the DUP back into the Executive with its tail between its legs, to accept that never again will Northern Ireland be a full part of the United Kingdom; never again will we be ruled solely by British laws; never again will there not be a partitioning border in the Irish Sea; never again will we go forward as a proper part of the UK. Instead, we will be ruled by colonial laws on many of our goods that we do not make and cannot change, and we must accept that, under the EU customs code to which we are subject, GB is a foreign country; accept that the suspension of article 6 is permanent, undermining the basis of the Union; and accept the stepping stone building towards an all-Ireland economy. If that is the price, it cannot be paid today, and I say to any thinking unionist, "It can't be paid tomorrow or any other day". Make no mistake about it: the demand to get this place going is to break unionism, to see the DUP back in government, as I said, tail between its legs. That is a price that cannot be paid. The hypocrisy does not end there. It extends into —
Yes, I will give way.
The ultimate irony is that the greatest threat to the Belfast Agreement today are its supposed supporters, who are demanding that we end power-sharing, get unionists out of government and move on without them. That is the position that is articulated to the House. The hypocrisy also extends to tomorrow. I heard media interviews with the Alliance Party and others in which they said that we must decouple the public-sector pay issue — so we must — but then they sign a motion that gets them onto the Secretary of State's bandwagon of blackmail.
There is not a word about decoupling in the motion that has brought us here. It, too, is but an attempt to add to the Secretary of State's blackmail of public servants, who are deserving of parity of pay with the rest of the United Kingdom. That is an equal citizenship right, just as the right to be governed as a full part of the United Kingdom is an equal citizenship right.
752 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty
Decided as qualifying on a second assessment, because Jev’s answers did not settle it. The reasons are given below.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.63 (qualifying needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not qualifying).
- Criteria met: Identity framing (0.84).
- The text adopts the identity-based framing in its own voice (0.78).
- Subject area: Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty.
- The answers did not meet either automatic threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Second assessment
Jev’s answers did not settle this record, so a second model, claude-opus-5-5, read the same text (without the MLA’s name or party) and gave its reasons on 21 October 2026. How the second assessment works
- Verdict
- Qualifying
- Public interest or divisiveness
- Mixed
Against the published rubric
The speech engages with real constitutional substance, including the protocol, article 6 of the Acts of Union, the EU customs code and public-sector pay parity. But its repeated central claim is that the recall's 'fundamental motivation' is to 'break unionism' and force the DUP back 'with its tail between its legs'. That frames the dispute as a contest over which community is winning or losing, and attributes hostility towards unionism to opponents as a group. Phrases such as 'blind allegiance', 'worshipped at the shrine' and 'colonial laws' add identity-based point-scoring on top of the policy argument.
Public interest or divisiveness
There is a substantial policy argument about the effect of post-Brexit trading arrangements on the Belfast Agreement institutions, and a call to decouple public-sector pay from restoring the institutions. The dominant framing, however, imputes to other parties a motive to defeat and humiliate one community, and casts the matter as a communal struggle rather than a shared problem. Both the substantive and the divisive elements are significant.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.84 | Yes |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.31 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.05 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.57 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.25 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.23 | No |
| Overall judgement | 0.63 | Between thresholds |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing | 0.21 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.01 |
| Adopts it (chosen) | 0.78 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty | 0.97 |
| Sectarianism, hate crime and community relations | 0.03 |
| No identity-related subject | 0.00 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
| Parades, bonfires and commemorations | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:33 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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