The DUP is still the Unionists’ best hope of killing May’s Brexit deal

Yesterday, the prime minister visited Northern Ireland, as part of a two-week circuit of the UK, designed to sell her draft withdrawal deal with the EU to the British public. In an ironic twist, her message was received positively by nationalists, who previously excoriated Theresa May for negotiating a ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement with the DUP, while Arlene Foster described the visit as a “propaganda” tour.

Mrs Foster claims that the prime minister is “wasting time” trying to sell the draft agreement, because it will be voted down in parliament. For the moment, though, her party does not yet intend to withdraw support from the government. It will review its pact with the Conservatives, only if the House of Commons unexpectedly approves Mrs May’s Brexit deal.

This rather ambiguous position, as regards its relationship with the Tory administration, was in evidence at the DUP’s annual conference over the weekend.

On Friday, the chancellor of the exchequer, a convinced remainer who now consistently promotes softer forms of Brexit, was guest of honour at the party’s pre-conference dinner. Philip Hammond spent his day in Northern Ireland encouraging the idea that the Irish border ‘backstop’ is merely an insurance policy and implying that the government may yet find creative ways of convincing the DUP that it will never be used.

While the Tories and Democratic Unionists, “don’t always agree on everything,” the chancellor assured journalists, “I’m sure we’ll sort it out; we are two parties that agree fundamentally on the importance of maintaining the union.”

That optimistic view of the withdrawal deal’s prospects was not shared by speakers at the main session of the DUP’s conference. On Saturday, the star turn was a Conservative with a very different approach to Brexit, Boris Johnson, whose uncompromising message on an Irish Sea border was more to the taste of delegates at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Belfast.

If Mrs May’s deal is enacted, the former home secretary warned, Northern Ireland will no longer be “exclusively ruled by London or Stormont.” Johnson said that the province will, “have to accept large swathes of EU regulations now and in the future,” even if the rest of the UK chooses to pursue a more independent trade policy, after the transition period.

This analysis echoes the DUP’s view that the withdrawal agreement is an attempt by Brussels to divide the UK and place Northern Ireland under the EU’s control. The party’s leader at Westminster, Nigel Dodds, spoke in strikingly similar terms, about “swathes” of European law that will affect the province “with no say for anyone in Belfast or London.”

Though Hammond was received cordially by his Ulster hosts, the DUP accuses the government directly of ignoring its warnings about the backstop. “Back in December we advised the prime minister not to sign up to such a deal but she went ahead, ” Dodds alleged on Saturday, “the provisos we secured and she entered into them… she is now casting aside.”

This interpretation rather glosses over the DUP’s role in the genesis of articles 49 and 50 of December 2017’s “joint report”, which first formalised the UK’s commitment to a legal “backstop”, aimed at preventing a hard land border in Ireland.

The party certainly rejected early drafts of the document and a provision was added, that the government would ensure, “no new regulatory barriers develop between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.” Yet, Arlene Foster released a statement, soon after the text was updated, claiming it as a victory, which guaranteed, “there will be no ‘special status’ for NI as demanded by Sinn Fein” and “there will be no customs or trade border down the Irish Sea between NI and the rest of the UK.”

The DUP likes to pride itself on its reputation as a shrewd and ruthless negotiator, that can’t be flattered or rushed into agreeing a bad deal. It relishes the idea that it exerts an influence on the government far outweighing its numerical strength in the House of Commons and last year’s conference was an overt celebration of the party’s apparent clout at Westminster.

In the case of the backstop, though, it looks like the DUP miscalculated the significance of the December text and was then ignored, as it tried to hold Theresa May to its interpretation of the joint report. This reversal of fortunes can’t help but have knocked the party’s self-confidence and the resulting sense of betrayal led to a more uncertain atmosphere at this year’s event.

The DUP has its origins in the crude sectarian populism of Ian Paisley. Over subsequent years, it changed dramatically, absorbing waves of defectors from the more moderate UUP and broadening its base to include unionists of all types. However, its critics still claim that it is a parochial party, focussed disproportionately on extracting more and more public money from Westminster, with only a passing interest in the political and economic life of the rest of the UK.

Even so, the DUP’s position on the withdrawal agreement, that it will hive off Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, possibly in perpetuity, and potentially damage the Union beyond repair, is shared across all shades of Ulster unionism. There are doubts about the party’s reliability and even its motives, but its unionist opponents have little choice but to hope that the DUP’s compact with hard-line Brexiteers will hold, and that together they can kill off May’s Brexit deal.