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“The DUP have no mandate to stay out of Stormont.” False. Jeffrey Donaldson launched the DUP’s election campaign in the Strand Cinema on 4th April 2022. During his key note address he made an unequivocal commitment which would become a central feature of his campaign. He said, “the protocol must be replaced with arrangements that protect Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom.” He did not stop there. He added, “until [UKG] do, I will not be going back into an executive that is required to implement a protocol that harms Northern Ireland every day." The erroneous criticism that the DUP *did not* pledge to block an Executive until the Protocol was remedied flies in the face of the facts. Perhaps there are some who genuinely forget what the DUP were saying at the time or why we even had an election in the first place, but I suspect, that instead of succumbing to a sudden dose of amnesia, most are cynically reinventing the DUP campaign to disqualify and delegitimise their mandated approach to tackle the Protocol. This is an underhanded tactic popularised in the aftermath of Brexit. If you cannot browbeat a political opponent into submission, then try to take the legs from beneath them by pretending they misled the electorate. It is a way of dismissing the mandate of your opponent to diminish their authority and unsettle their determination. It is also pathetically patronising. The notion that Unionists somehow did not know what they were voting for when they put a tick beside a DUP candidate’s name on their ballot paper is for the birds. I am yet to meet a single Unionist who is as disturbed as Sorcha Eastwood would have you believe that Stormont is not yet up and running, despite how many hand-written letters her constituency office may or may not receive. Time and time again, before and after the election(check images below), the DUP insisted there could be no Executive until the Protocol was resolved. If they were suggesting otherwise, as some continually contend, why then did Naomi Long claim in the 2022 ITV leaders debate that the election was about, “whether we had a government at all?” Where did she get that idea if the DUP were promising a prompt return to the house on the hill? Equally, if Unionists thereby expected the DUP to hop back into Stormont following the election, surely such an aberration would sully DUP support in the polls? Yet up to now, polls are showing the opposite. One year and four months on from the 2022 election and grassroots support for the DUP is going up, not down. Square that circle if you think the DUP do not have a mandate for staying out of Stormont. In reality, all the nasty jibes, demeaning comments and wildly inaccurate criticisms, from every corner imaginable it would seem, comes down to one thing and one thing only: Unionism cannot be cajoled or coerced into accepting a Protocol that fundamentally separates ourselves from the rest of UK in the way that this arrangement self-evidently does. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. Other parties and politicians keep throwing themselves into a frenzy because they cannot cope with Unionism finally saying “enough is enough.” They make up slurs, target *unelected figures*, delegitimise concerns, dismiss mandates, downplay issues, and so on. Yet Unionist politicians and their electorate remain resolute and have been proven right at every step of the way. Every time the British Government, or Irish Government, or European Union or even US Representatives try to push this unjust Protocol through the door, they are met with a few hundred thousand Unionists keeping the door shut by standing behind it. It is they who the DUP, and others, represent. It is they who have given the DUP, and others, a mandate to achieve a lasting and effective resolution. It is they who demand the rightful restoration of our place within the United Kingdom. Until such a resolution is forthcoming, there is no basis for power-sharing.