Ohh Jim, Jim, Jim Jim Jim, this is a fascinating new constitutional principle you’ve discovered, if a politician believes a law or legal framework is wrong and campaigns against it, they have no respect for the rule of law. Does that principle apply retrospectively to you? You spent years opposing the Northern Ireland Protocol, despite it being given legal effect by the sovereign UK Parliament, the parliment you tell us you adore, You didn’t simply say, “That’s the law, therefore I must respect it.” You challenged its legality and constitutionality all the way to the UK Supreme Court. When the Parades Commission, exercising powers given to it by law, made determinations you disagreed with, you didn’t tell unionists to quietly accept them either. In 2013 you called one determination a “farcical Parades Commission decision”, demanded that the Commission be abolished, and argued that the law should instead presume in favour of traditional Orange routes. And perhaps we should go further back. In 1985 you attended the first major meeting of the United Ulster Loyalist Front, established amid opposition to police rerouting of loyalist parades. The organisation had UDA involvement, including senior UDA figure John McMichael on its coordinating committee. Then in 1986 you helped organise the rally inaugurating the Ballymena battalion of Ulster Resistance. You marched at the head of hundreds of loyalists, contemporary accounts describe many wearing paramilitary, style uniforms and some wearing masks, before pledging your “personal support” for Ulster Resistance. You even complained that the RUC had tried to prevent the procession reaching the meeting and celebrated the colour party getting into town another way. So let’s dispense with the rewriting of history. When Jim Allister believed laws, institutions or government arrangements were wrong, he opposed them, protested against them, challenged them in court and campaigned to have them changed or abolished. And he was entitled to do so. Because the rule of law does not require citizens or politicians to believe every law is just. There is a fundamental difference between saying “this law is wrong and I will oppose it” and saying “the law does not apply to me.” If Michelle O’Neill is alleged to have committed an offence, investigate it and let the legal process determine that. But spare everyone the suggestion that simply opposing a law demonstrates contempt for the rule of law. Because by that newly invented standard, Jim, your own political history, from opposition to parade restrictions and the Anglo-Irish Agreement through Ulster Resistance, the Protocol and beyond, would make for some remarkably uncomfortable reading. Opposing laws and institutions you disagreed with was called political principle when you did it. It cannot suddenly become constitutional anarchy when Michelle O’Neill does it.

Apparently unionism and loyalism have suddenly become the eternal guardians of peaceful protest, restraint and the rule of law. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of NI knows how selective that version of history is. And this newfound horror at “mobs” gathering on streets is particularly difficult to take seriously from you. You were one of the prominent voices of the loyalist flag-protest FFS , a campaign built around people taking to the streets, demonstrations and road disruption. Some of those protests descended into serious disorder. And let’s talk about Drumcree. When loyalism didn’t get the outcome it wanted, NI didn’t simply witness dignified disagreement. We saw roadblocks, hijacked and burning vehicles, petrol bombs, attacks on police, widespread destruction and even gunfire. In 2000 alone, during protests surrounding Drumcree, RUC figures recorded 288 petrol-bomb incidents, 280 attacks on the security forces, 13 shooting incidents and 88 hijacked vehicles. Fifty-seven RUC officers and five soldiers were injured, while hundreds of vehicles and properties were damaged. People remember roads being brought to a standstill. They remember burning vehicles and barricades. They remember police coming under sustained attack. So spare everyone the fairy tale that loyalism has historically responded to decisions it dislikes with nothing but “great restraint and discipline.” There were occasions when loyalists didn’t merely stand on a road, they helped wreck the place when they didn’t get their way. And here’s the hypocrisy, that history does not make every unionist or loyalist responsible for those actions. You understood perfectly well that individuals were responsible for their own behaviour when protests involved your community. Yet today you take alleged offences by individuals and repeatedly smear an entire nationalist crowd as a “lawbreaking mob”. And now comes the remarkable transformation. After weeks of rhetoric about “Nazi-style” politics, “republican mobs”, “supremacists” and nationalist “hatred”, suddenly everything is about law, dignity, restraint and peaceful protest. It looks remarkably like an attempt to walk back the rhetoric now that the temperature has risen. The internet has receipts. The rhetoric didn’t disappear just because the strategy changed. If somebody commits an offence, investigate them and prosecute them on the evidence. Nobody gets a free pass. But collective guilt cannot suddenly become acceptable because the crowd is nationalist. And perhaps you might consider your own contribution to creating this atmosphere. From the outside, this increasingly looks less like leadership and more like someone who has spent weeks placing himself at the centre of a deeply sensitive dispute, escalating the language and enhancing his own profile in the process. You cannot spend weeks pouring rhetorical petrol on a fire and then arrive dressed as the fire marshal demanding everyone else explain the flames. And perhaps the most revealing words in the entire post are, “It’s time the State…faced them down.” There it is, old mentality that when one community refuses to yield, the State should simply “face them down.” History may be rather less flattering than the heroic role you have written for yourself You may imagine these weeks will record you as some fearless defender of loyalism who stood firm while everyone else surrendered. Others will remember something very different, armchair blogger who inserted himself into a decades-old dispute, relentlessly amplified the most inflammatory rhetoric, turned the temperature up, and then tried to distance himself from the resulting mess by suddenly discovering the language of restraint and the rule of law. That’s not fearless leadership, That’s a cautionary tale about what happens when you get in way over your head The rule of law didn’t suddenly become sacred when the people standing in the road stopped being loyalists.