Urgent clarity is needed on proposal to delay Brexit

The DUP is in a position to get that clarity, because it props up the government.

Donald Tusk is saying that the extending Brexit beyond March 29 is now a “rational solution” to avoid a chaotic Brexit. Leo Varadkar has also said that the UK will delay Brexit (or leave the EU without a deal).

This might suggest that there is informal EU-UK agreement that Brexit will be indeed delayed for a short while.

If so, there is probably a clear majority in Parliament for such a short extension to be followed by MPs voting for a variation of the Withdrawal Agreement.

Otherwise, many MPs would seek to defer Brexit indefinitely (and not just for the short period that is mooted).

That Jeremy Corbyn has now endorsed a second referendum makes it all the more likely that moderately eurosceptic MPs will now swing behind the Withdrawal Agreement.

The UK seems not even to be trying to open the treaty. This all raises the prospect of the backstop going through, perhaps with a fig leaf that is endorsed by attorney general.

If this happens, it is hard to see how it could do so with unionist support.

It will in effect mean that Northern Ireland will be indefinitely aligned with the EU, and at odds with the rest of Great Britain in terms of regulations (and perhaps one day in terms of customs tariffs too) — all because almost everyone has acquiesced in the notion that an Irish border without so much as CCTV was the over-riding objective with regard to Brexit on this island. Business leaders have failed to insist that the Irish Sea must not become an internal UK border.

Such an outcome will not only be disastrous for unionism, with its shift of sovereignty, but particularly so for those unionists who support Brexit. Staying in the EU, for all the huge shortcomings of such an humiliating reversal, would be preferable for unionists than this worst of all worlds scenario.