In this election, the issues boil down to two fundamentals in politics - trust and sovereignty.
In February the DUP claimed that the sea border was gone. “Zero checks, zero paperwork” was the infamous boast. Not only was the sea border supposed to be gone, the pipeline of EU law into Northern Ireland was allegedly severed and our place restored in the United Kingdom.
Only after the election was called did the DUP’s tune change and they grudgingly admitted their spin was false. Now those who sought to mislead you think they deserve your vote, claiming they will now do what they claimed they had already done. Effectively, the pitch is we misled you in February but vote for us in July nonetheless. Is that good enough for you?
TUV, in contrast, has been consistent, telling the truth about the sea border and its ramifications. We believe trust and integrity still matter in politics.
If you vote for the same old parties which let you down before don’t be surprised if they let you down again.
The other core issue in this election is sovereignty.
Recently we celebrated the 80th anniversary of D-Day. D-Day was in part about guaranteeing for Europe many of the things we take for granted today - replacing dictatorship with the right of the people to decide who governs them.
Remarkably, while on July 4 you will elect MPs to what is supposedly our sovereign parliament, something like 60% of the laws governing our NI economy will continue to made not in London or Belfast but in a foreign parliament in Brussels.
No other country in the world would tolerate a situation where 1.9 million of its citizens are ruled by laws they do not make and cannot change.
The recent ruling that UK immigration policy doesn’t apply in Northern Ireland because EU law trumps British law opens the door to a potential flood of illegal immigrants to our province, seeing Ulster as a soft touch.
This is unaccountable EU colonial rule dominating every facet of our lives.
It all flows, of course, from the abandonment of sovereignty over much of Northern Ireland’s economic life to the EU through the iniquitous protocol.
The EU plan is obvious - divert trade away from our natural partner in Great Britain and towards the Republic and where the economics flows the politics will follow.
While some claim they have made progress on the protocol the facts - whether one considers dentistry, migration, legacy legislation or even crisps tell a very different story. Our union is being dismantled before our eyes. Hence our mission is to restore the union.
Remarkably, TUV is the only party in this election which has been clear and consistent in what should be a basic unionist demand, the full restoration of the Acts of Union.
As confirmed by independent legal option, Article Six of the Acts of Union which guarantees freedom of trade between and within the different parts of the UK has been suspended by the protocol.
This will remain the case for as long as Northern Ireland remains trapped within the EU single market and customs union. That basic reality means that Great Britain, the rest of our own nation and to whose capital we will elect MP, is treated as a foreign country in trading terms.