Brexit Betrayed: Jim Allister Warns EU “Reset” Risks Undermining UK. Sovereignty.
This week, the Member of Parliament for North Antrim and leader of the TUV, Jim Allister, has once again called out the Government’s strategy of using the failure to deliver Brexit in Northern Ireland as justification for undermining Brexit in Great Britain through its so-called EU “Reset”.
Allister first warned about this in his seminal pamphlet for the UK Sovereignty Foundation, published in February, titled “The EU Reset: How the UK Government is both using and betraying the United Kingdom.”
In his latest intervention, he highlights how last year the EU moved to ban conventional tumble dryers in Northern Ireland, and how the UK Government is now attempting to impose similar rules on Great Britain.
Since 1 July last year, UK citizens in Northern Ireland have been banned, courtesy of EU law, from buying new vented and condenser tumble dryers. The only new machines available are heat pump tumble dryers, which are significantly more expensive. They are also more limited, as they only function effectively at certain ambient temperatures. This presents a real problem during the winter if your tumble dryer is kept in a shed or garage, unless you are prepared to pay to heat those spaces as well as your home.
Fast forward a year, and we now see the UK Government proposing to use Great Britain’s post-Brexit regulatory freedoms to introduce similar restrictions across England, Wales, and Scotland. This would be done through the Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information (Household Tumble Dryers) Regulations 2026, currently before Parliament. A key justification offered is the need to prevent regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
In response, Allister has tabled a motion to annul the legislation, and his message is clear.
Writing yesterday for Parliament News, he said:
“In the Brexit referendum, the question presented to the people of the UK was not whether England, Northern Ireland, Scotland or Wales should leave the EU individually. The question was, very simply, whether the United Kingdom should leave the EU.
Thus, every one of the 17.4 million votes cast, the largest democratic vote in our history, was a vote for the United Kingdom to leave the EU. In that context, it was deeply wrong that the result was not honoured in full, and that only Great Britain was afforded Brexit.
Rather than taking back control, Northern Ireland was forced to give much more of it away, becoming subject not merely to 300 laws, but to 300 areas of law, effectively, to that degree, an EU colony.
Having been subject to this mistreatment, I am not prepared, as someone who believes in our United Kingdom and the integrity of our democracy, to sit back and allow the Government to use the failure to deliver Brexit in Northern Ireland to justify sabotaging Brexit in Great Britain.
It is bad enough that the biggest democratic vote in our history was undermined in one part of the UK, let alone that it should now be undermined in the rest.”
Allister has further argued that anyone who believes the answer to the disenfranchisement of UK citizens in Northern Ireland is to extend similar arrangements across the rest of the UK has “completely lost the plot”.
The Government proposes introducing a ban on the sale of new conventional tumble dryers in Great Britain between now and January 2027 through secondary legislation, without debate and without a vote.
Thanks to Allister’s motion, which has so far been signed by every Reform MP, several Northern Ireland MPs, and former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith, the proposed measures are now being challenged.
Speaking to Conservative Post, Allister said:
“Although the tumble dryer legislation is not formally part of the Reset, it reflects its underlying logic, bringing Great Britain into alignment with EU law, partly to prevent divergence between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
If we are to stand up to the coming Reset, we must oppose this development with absolute resolve. That requires putting the Government under maximum pressure, which in turn depends on securing as many MP signatures as possible for my motion.”
In considering the way forward, it is helpful to revisit the final paragraphs of Allister’s pamphlet:
“The Reset amounts to imposing a Northern Ireland style settlement on Great Britain, submitting in advance to the laws of a foreign parliament, laws you do not make and cannot change.
Having accepted this in one part of the UK, there is a certain logic to extending it to the rest of the country, particularly if it appears to reduce the disruptive effects of the internal border. But it would be a grave mistake, just as it has already been in Northern Ireland.
The truth is that so long as the EU is permitted to undermine the territorial integrity of the UK through ‘divide and rule’ tactics, effectively splitting the country via a customs border it controls, it will be impossible to secure a credible and sustainable Brexit in any part of the UK.
The only solution is for the people of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to stand together and assert that UK citizenship is indivisible. It cannot be treated as a bargaining chip, or traded by the state for perceived economic advantage in one part of the country over another.”
Allister’s motion states:
“That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, praying that the Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information (Household Tumble Dryers) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/318), dated 19 March 2026, be annulled.”
https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/65654/energy-conservation
