Editorial: ​DUP is right to admit Stormont ‘Safeguarding the Union’ deal was over-sold and help form part of new coalition against Irish Sea border

​It is very good to see key members of the DUP Westminster team form part of a new political coalition against the Irish Sea border betrayal of Northern Ireland.

The new group, which is made up of Conservatives, Reform, DUP and TUV politicians, has said in its founding declaration about the Stormont restoration deal that the principles the faction stands for include: “Recognising the loss of trust engendered by misrepresentations over ‘Safeguarding the Union’, endorsing the 2022 to 2024 stand of unionists in their Stormont boycott, and regretting the current loss of leverage.”

​While the DUP was put under intolerable pressure to support some form of Irish Sea border for years after the UK vote to leave the EU in 2016, it is nonetheless regrettable that the ‘Safeguarding’ document two years ago was promoted by the party in a way that suggested the internal frontier had almost entirely gone. In fact, its massive scale is not only becoming clear with time, but is being slowly implemented. The framework and safeguarding papers merely mitigated some of the impact of this constitutional outrage.

The DUP, for all its misleading commentary in 2024, is right of course to blame the Tories, the worst of whom on this matter was Boris Johnson, who flagrantly ditched unionists in his 2019 deal with Leo Varadkar, when his weak predecessor Theresa May at least seemed to feel deep regret at jettisoning part of the UK. With Labour now happy to overlook the trade barrier in their determination always to give Ireland what it demands, the new parliamentary faction is right to accuse successive governments of “attempts to deceive Northern Ireland citizens and in particular unionists both in the incarnation and evolution of the Protocol”.

We wish this new grouping well in their campaign.