Letter: Voters across the EU, but not here, vote for the politicians who will make our laws in Northern Ireland

A letter from Dan Boucher:

Between Thursday and Sunday, we witnessed a unique event in our history, the election of a Parliament whose purpose it will be to make laws for part of the UK, where none of the people standing for election stood to represent any part of our country.

I refer to the election of the 720 members of the European Parliament (6 – 9 June) whose responsibility it will be to make the laws of Northern Ireland in some 300 different areas over the next five years.

They will have the power to make decisions on matters with far reaching consequences including, for example, the future use of amalgam that could make the difference between whether or not one of our great national institutions, the NHS, can continue in Northern Ireland as a dental service from 2025.

However, they will make this decision out of regard for their constituents, those who elected them, and to whom they are accountable, in the Republic of Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Poland etc etc, not anyone living in Northern Ireland.

It is quite extraordinary that there should have ever been such a monumental failure of UK statecraft. What is even more extraordinary, though, is that the election coincided exactly with the eightieth anniversary of when the UK, joined by our allies, risked all to liberate those whose grandchildren and great-grandchildren have just presumed to stand for election to become our colonial legislators.

As if this was not enough, the part of the UK to be disenfranchised is that longest associated with the liberation project, Northern Ireland, which – in the face of the opposition of the Free State – became the first place in the UK, and indeed Europe, to receive US troops preparatory to what would ultimately result in D-Day some two years later. Moreover, the Royal Ulster Rifles was the only UK regiment to send in two battalions on D-Day. How completely inappropriate that the eightieth anniversary of their sacrifice in the name of democracy should be dishonoured by the sealing of the partial disenfranchisement of their children and children’s children.

In an age where commitment to democracy is now a basic standard of civility, this arrangement is morally and politically indefensible and unsustainable, especially when an alternative means to handling the border exists – mutual enforcement – that does not involve disenfranchising a single voter.

Dr Dan Boucher, TUV/Reform candidate Belfast South and Mid Down and former European Parliamentary Candidate and DUP Director of Policy and Research