Crucial extra time to highlight failures in PM’s Brexit plan

Boris Johnson’s deal was approved by MPs shortly before they rejected the prime minister’s timetabling to rush the deal’s accompanying legislation through the House of Commons.

The Withdrawal Agreement creates a major border in the Irish Sea, and is a complete betrayal of Mr Johnson’s words at the DUP conference in Belfast this time last year, when he said that no prime minister would ever agree such an internal frontier to divide the United Kingdom.

Yesterday and the previous evening it began to emerge that the deal was even worse from a unionist perspective than previously thought, with possible export declarations needing to be made for movements from Northern Ireland to Great Britain.

This, if it comes to pass, is a disastrous state of affairs, and a radical change to our most valuable trade in the Province, which has always been unfettered with the rest of the UK.

There will now be more time to scrutinise the legislation and find out exactly its implications.

The votes of the DUP and Lady Sylvia Hermon were critical last night and will continue to be so in the coming divisions.

But the direction of travel seems clear, and the prospects of the DUP getting the sort of changes to the Withdrawal Agreement that it needs to be able to support it are slim.

If the future of business in Northern Ireland involves such barriers with Great Britain it will be the worst setback for unionism since 1921, and will create a major rift between unionism and the Conservative Party.

The latter might think that that is of no consequence, yet it is also possible that this delay will cause a small but critical number of MPs to rethink the damage that is being inflicted on a Union that has endured for 200+ years.