David Trimble funeral: Northern Ireland Protocol was his unfinished business ... it needs to change, says Doug Beattie

Speaking after the funeral service of the former first minister outside Harmony Hill Presbyterian Church in Lambeg, the current Ulster Unionist leader said until his final days Lord Trimble took exception to and demanded an alternative to the protocol.

Mr Beattie, who canvassed with the ex-UUP leader in the Upper Bann constituency back in May, said: “I think people sometimes forget that right up to the last David Trimble still had fire in his eyes, fire in his belly for politics. He was frail, we knew he was frail, we could see he was frail but he was still working hard on the political front.

“It was the protocol he took exception to and people need to listen to him, and come up with a solution to deal with the problems that he was talking about and that is the protocol.”

He continued: “It was important to him. He will see it as unfinished business but he was right in what he was saying, and people need to stop, reflect and listen, to understand that the protocol does damage and undermines the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

“David saw that as one of the architects of that and is important that we listen to the words that he was saying before his passing in regards to it.”

The UUP leader said it was a “sad day” to say farewell to someone who “was a giant in Northern Ireland politics. He was a man of vision, a man of courage, a man who took decisions when they were difficult decisions to take and people are alive today because of him”.

Mr Beattie said: “It is a shame at times that we talk about people like this in death when it would be so much nicer if we were able to talk about this vision he had in life. But it is also worth remembering that today there was a moving ceremony for the family to say goodbye because above all else David Trimble was a husband, a father, a grandfather and a brother, and we have to remember that human side of him and frailty of a man we all have in ourselves.

“The place will be a lesser place for David’s passing. I am very proud to be the Ulster Unionist Party leader, I am very proud to walk in the footsteps of people like David Trimble.”

He added: “But I can never emulate what he had achieved. All I can do is take his legacy, which is easy to quantify – it is peace in Northern Ireland, it is a less divided, less sectarian society and we should try to push that on as best we can and make those difficult decisions. We are sorry for his loss but we remember his legacy in the many, many years and months to come.”

Just before the funeral cortege made its way to Blaris Cemetery, DUP MP Sammy Wilson stopped to pay tribute to Lord Trimble.

Mr Wilson said: “Many people in there including myself of course at times have had differences of opinion with David about the way forward.

“But at the end of the day he was someone like myself who believed in the value of the Union, wanting to promote the Union. I know that in his latter days the work that he put into trying to highlight the difficulties which the protocol was causing, the way in which the protocol, to use his own words, ‘ripped the Belfast Agreement up’ and his voice counted for a whole lot in the protocol debate.”

The man who brought about the protocol with the EU, Boris Johnson, attended yesterday’s funeral which the outgoing prime minister described as “very humbling”. In a tweet after he was whisked away from Lambeg amid tight security, Mr Johnson said: “His principled determination to forge a better future for all marks him out as one of the giants of our history.”

One former prime minister absent from the service was Tony Blair whom Lord Trimble had to deal with at the time of the 1998 Belfast Agreement.

Other political figures from that period did attend the funeral including former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who warmly embraced Lord Trimble’s widow Daphne inside the church the family have worshipped in for four decades.