To add to the piece yesterday about the rhetoric at Ballymoney is this from the Belfast Telegraph where notably Jeffrey Donaldson has now moved into the renegotiate the GFA/BA camp. Not a lot of that made in other media I thought, but what he has to say is very telling about the headspace of some of unionism.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has proposed changing the Good Friday Agreement saying recent court proceedings revealed that Northern Ireland's status as part of the UK is not protected.

Writing for Unionist Voice, Sir Jeffrey referred to the Court of Appeal ruling that the constitutional guarantee, or the consent principle, in the Belfast Agreement does not preserve Northern Ireland's status within the UK but "merely applies to a final transfer of sovereignty".

Assuming the judgment of the Court of Appeal is not overturned by the UK Supreme Court, this means that the constitutional guarantee has never operated to prevent a change in the status of Northern Ireland.

This, he says, has served as a "wakeup call" to those who believed the consent of the people of Northern Ireland was required for any change to our constitutional status.

This, of course, is nonsense.

British courts are pointing out that the Northern Ireland Protocol doesn't breach UK sovereignty - that it is for London to decide. That the ultimate arbiter of British sovereignty rests with London rather than with Jeffrey Donaldson or Unionism is no great revelation.

Mind you, neither is the idea that Donaldson would seek a renegotiation of the GFA/BA. After all, famously he and Foster broke with the UUP over the agreement and joined the DUP.

The problem is that in every aspect Donaldson reifies the Protocol to an absurd degree. And he ignores the reality that Northern Ireland under the GFA/BA is not the same as Essex let alone Wales or Scotland, though is closer to those last two. For a start there's shared sovereignty with the ROI on a range of agreed matters. Which makes the following seems frankly bizarre:

 

 

The Lagan Valley MP said it is important to pursue legislative change which is a real and meaningful protection for the Union and to sustain majority support for their position.

"For example, "Any" (post 1998) change to Northern Ireland's constitutional status within the United Kingdom should require the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland voting in a poll held for that purpose or should be subject to a cross community vote of the Northern Ireland Assembly," he said.

He argues that provision is entirely consistent with the the government's publicly stated position in relation to Northern Ireland and gives primacy to the people of Northern Ireland. 

But even there there are problems. Primacy over what? Brexit? The majority voted against Brexit in NI. Does that count for nothing to him?