Owen Polley: Brexit betrayal comes after two Tory prime ministers refused to put the Irish nationalist grievance-machine back in its box

We hoped that their previous rejection of an Irish Sea border was based on principle rather than expediency.

As they argued against Theresa May’s backstop, there were nagging suspicions that these Tories were more worried about its effects on the dream of a free-trading Britain than its impact on the Union.

When Boris Johnson became prime minister, we fretted that he would drop even the flimsy, impermanent UK-wide safeguards negotiated by his predecessor, so that the rest of the country could do deals with the rest of the world.

In the end, we’ve been misused by both of these fraudulent leaders and their backbench MPs.

It’s true that May’s deal didn’t involve a tariff barrier in the Irish Sea, at least in the immediate future. But despite all the blandishments about her ‘precious Union’, she used Northern Ireland cynically, as an excuse to implement a close customs and regulatory relationship with the EU for the whole UK.

Boris Johnson attacked her withdrawal agreement in uncompromising terms. After negotiating his own deal, he claimed he’d replaced the ‘undemocratic backstop’ with arrangements that protected the Union and maintained unfettered access for Northern Ireland to the market in Great Britain.

There were many people, including unionists, who were prepared to believe him initially.

Some of them even now ignore the text of his agreement and the fact that his claims have steadily fallen apart.

Under detailed questioning, Tory ministers gave such hapless and uncertain answers, it was difficult to tell whether they were misrepresenting the deal deliberately or simply didn’t understand it.

The government tried to deny or downplay several aspects of its agreement, only to admit later that they were accurate.

We now know that Northern Irish businesses will have to pay tariffs up-front, in order to buy goods from Great Britain. They’ll have to fill-in expensive paperwork, to sell their goods on the mainland, and the government hasn’t done the sums, to work out how serious this burden will be.

Research from the House of Commons’ library suggests we will pay VAT rates set in Dublin rather than London.

We could even be in a different time-zone to the rest of the country.

And each of these capitulations and humiliations has been made to ensure that the small amount of trade we do with the Irish Republic can move without so much as an extra camera to track its progress.

They’ve been conceded because two Tory governments have repeatedly refused to put the Irish nationalist grievance-machine, which has found new sponsors in Brussels, back in its box.

No matter how suspicious many of us were about Boris Johnson’s intentions, we could not have foreseen that he’d be prepared to smash the Union so wantonly, so completely, to get what he wanted. This man, who accused his opponents of concocting a ‘surrender bill’ has conceived a spectacular surrender of his own.

But let’s not pretend that the deal was purely the responsibility of Boris Johnson.

For three years eurocrats, Dublin ministers, northern remainers and nationalists talked up the importance of a seamless Irish border and talked down the threat of checks at Irish Sea ports.

They worked closely with representative organisations of retail, farming, manufacturing and other sectors, who gave this political message, which was explicitly hostile to unionism, credibility.

We should have every sympathy with company owners, largely apolitical and focussed on keeping afloat, who are now discovering the costs of being cut off from their biggest market in Great Britain.

The professional schmoozers who represent them should, for the most part, cringe with shame. They contributed to the idea that dividing Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK could be accomplished with little difficulty.

The DUP too, while it rightly opposes the deal now, made it possible by backing plans for an internal regulatory border. Remember, the party also gave its support to the joint report, back in 2017, that formalised the idea of a backstop. And it accepted uncritically the hard-Brexiteers’ assurances that everything would be alright for Northern Ireland eventually, right up to the point when the betrayal was too blatant to ignore.

The progress of Boris Johnson’s withdrawal bill will now be delayed, while the parties prepare to fight a December general election. The UK is unlikely to leave the EU until the 31st January 2020, at the earliest, after Brussels granted another extension.

Some of the DUP’s former allies in the ERG assert that the intervening time will be spent pursuing a better deal for NI. Their claims should be treated with utter contempt. The Conservatives will be fighting this election on the basis that Johnson has delivered a good deal for Britain. Many voters, who want to ‘get Brexit done’, agree and the complaints of Ulster unionists are unlikely to change their minds.

I hear some Tory MPs are briefing local supporters that the least palatable aspects of the agreement will be resolved before the transition period ends in December 2020. They expect us to believe that the EU, to date intractable and determined, will suddenly prove pliable and pragmatic, when it comes to soothing Northern Ireland’s anxieties over the next year.

How stupid do they think we are?