Jim Allister tables Commons motion on 9th Brexit anniversary, urges full UK sovereignty over NI

Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader and North Antrim MP Jim Allister

To mark the ninth anniversary of the historic Brexit referendum on 23rd June, Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) leader and North Antrim MP Jim Allister has tabled a strongly-worded motion in the House of Commons, decrying what he describes as the continued failure to deliver Brexit for Northern Ireland.

The motion, submitted on Sunday, highlights Allister’s longstanding opposition to post-Brexit arrangements which, he contends, have left Northern Ireland effectively partitioned from the rest of the United Kingdom.

In the text of the motion, Allister states:

“This House deplores that 9 years on from the Brexit referendum - the greatest democratic mandate in the nation’s history - Brexit has still not been delivered for Northern Ireland and that instead the United Kingdom has been partitioned by a foreign EU customs and regulatory border in the Irish Sea, leaving Northern Ireland under the EU Customs Code and subject in 300 areas of law to EU, not UK, law.”

The motion is a renewed call for what Allister and others within the unionist community see as the necessary restoration of UK sovereignty across the entirety of the nation.

It criticises the current trade and legal frameworks operating under the Windsor Framework and previously the Northern Ireland Protocol—agreements struck with the European Union to manage cross-border trade post-Brexit while preventing a hard border on the island of Ireland.

In a further appeal to the UK Government, Allister’s motion continues:

“This House therefore calls on HMG to take back control and sovereignty over the whole United Kingdom and to regulate the international border with the EU through application of the solution of mutual enforcement.”

The principle of mutual enforcement—a concept supported by some legal experts and Brexit campaigners—advocates that each side (the UK and the EU) enforces its own rules on goods intended for its market, thereby removing the need for customs infrastructure at the border.

Allister’s intervention underscores continued unionist unease with the current arrangements, which critics argue have entrenched a de facto regulatory border in the Irish Sea, isolating Northern Ireland from parts of the UK’s internal market. His comments come amid wider debates over the democratic accountability of EU law in the region and the constitutional implications for the UK.

The motion is unlikely to be selected for immediate debate but serves as a symbolic reaffirmation of TUV opposition to what it sees as an ongoing democratic deficit for Northern Ireland within the UK post-Brexit.

Context: A decade of Brexit bebate

Since the 2016 referendum, which saw the UK vote to leave the EU by a 52% majority, the status of Northern Ireland has remained one of the most contentious issues in post-Brexit negotiations.

While the rest of the UK formally left the EU single market and customs union in January 2021, Northern Ireland continues to align with certain EU rules to avoid a hard border with the Republic of Ireland—an arrangement enshrined first in the Protocol and subsequently modified by the Windsor Framework.

Allister’s motion reiterates the frustration among some unionist parties and voters who believe that Brexit has not been fully realised for the region and that Northern Ireland remains legally tethered to EU oversight in significant areas of economic regulation.

As the UK marks nine years since the referendum, the question of Northern Ireland’s constitutional and regulatory future remains unresolved for many, with Jim Allister once again placing the issue firmly on the parliamentary agenda.