Sam McBride: The DUP and Brexit – from backing Leave on a whim to Arlene Foster’s ‘blood red line’, and now her surrender

Why did Arlene Foster last week explicitly signal the end of her fight against an Irish Sea trade border just two days before the front page of the Financial Times set out what appeared to be evidence that even Boris Johnson has not given up on preventing that outcome?
Why would Arlene Foster surrender on the Irish Sea border when even Boris Johnson is said to be attempting to alter it? Photo: Charles McQuillan/GettyWhy would Arlene Foster surrender on the Irish Sea border when even Boris Johnson is said to be attempting to alter it? Photo: Charles McQuillan/Getty
Why would Arlene Foster surrender on the Irish Sea border when even Boris Johnson is said to be attempting to alter it? Photo: Charles McQuillan/Getty

It is a question which has not just perplexed many of those looking into the DUP from the outside, but also some of its own members.

In an interview with Sky News’ deputy political editor Sam Coates broadcast last Friday, Mrs Foster made clear that she still disliked the Prime Minister’s deal but that it was now law. She said: “I mean, there are some who would continue to fight against the protocol. I have to recognise that that is the reality now.”

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When it was put to Mrs Foster that she was going to have to be part of a process that implements the deal she dislikes and which loyalists branded “the betrayal act”, the First Minister said: “Yes, we do.”

How could it be that Mrs Foster had effectively given up on an issue so fundamental to the Union when the great betrayer himself, the man who twice in the space of six months abandoned the DUP, allegedly now is manoeuvring to at least weaken that new internal UK frontier?

Firstly, although Mrs Foster’s interview was aired on Friday, it was conducted three weeks earlier as part of an extended television package looking at the future of the Union. That may explain one seemingly inexplicable aspect of her remarks – the implication that she was unaware of what Mr Johnson was planning, despite the DUP’s Westminster leader suggesting over the weekend that Mr Johnson’s actions were evidence of DUP influence.

The second point is that with Mr Johnson and Dominic Cummings often developments are not as they seem. As with so much of the Brexit debate, the trade implications of the bill which he is now bringing to the Commons are still ambiguous because of the multi-layered processes and legislation involved, and the fact that all of this is without precedent.

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It may be that the Prime Minister is not in fact preparing to undermine the looming internal UK border – a border which he implausibly insisted was not the inevitable consequence of his deal – but is yet again using Northern Ireland as a lever to secure some other concession from Brussels.

But regardless of those issues, there is a simple substantive question: Is Mrs Foster going to stake her job, or devolution itself, on attempting to stop an Irish Sea border, or does she now just want to just get the whole thing over with as quietly as possible?

Although the DUP has long presented itself to many of its supporters as an exponent of the no surrender school of unionism, as demonstrated in the often bellicose rhetoric of Ian Paisley or Gregory Campbell, for years it has been a creature of deep pragmatism.

A willingness to bend inflexible stances to the political needs of the moment runs through most of the party’s key decisions this century – the agreement to power-sharing with Sinn Féin, the devolution of policing and justice, and January’s belated acceptance of an Irish language act as the price of devolution’s restoration.

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That pragmatism is about more than just expediency; it is also about trying to keep together a broad church of voters, knowing that the right wing unionist vote it once relied upon was insufficient to get it to the top of unionism and will not keep it there.

It is also about a desire to have power – a realisation from the post-Anglo-Irish Agreement years that when unionism cuts itself off then its position is likely to deteriorate.

But if there was ever an issue which on the DUP’s own terms goes to the heart of its ideological purpose and on which the party might have taken a robust stand, it was this.

Virtually every senior DUP figure has denounced the Prime Minister’s plan to treat Northern Ireland differently to the rest of the UK as constitutional and economic vandalism.

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Yet in her interview with Sky News Mrs Foster suggested that London sending some more money to Belfast or working more closely with companies in sectors such as cybersecurity could somehow “mitigate” that constitutional damage.

Every party has struggled with Brexit and many parties on both sides of the debate have some ideological conflict over the stance they have taken. But it is the scale of the DUP’s Brexit disaster which is beyond parallel. Just weeks into Mrs Foster’s leadership, the party stumbled into backing a leave vote not because she was an ardent Brexiteer or had carefully considered the implications of such a momentous decision, but because it was calculated as the easiest way to keep the party united.

In Mrs Foster’s defence, not a single one of her senior colleagues – even those who quietly voted remain – publicly dissented.

Having won the vote to leave the EU, the DUP then rejected suggestions of a compromise soft Brexit (although that would have had major problems of its own) and pressed to leave both the EU customs union and single market.

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The party backed not just the Tories in general, but the right wing of the Conservative Party consistently until the point at which they were betrayed in precisely the fashion many observers had anticipated because most of the ardent Tory Brexiteers cared more about Brexit than Northern Ireland.

A year ago this week, Newsnight broke a major story, reporting that Boris Johnson was privately preparing to agree a Northern Ireland-only backstop – despite the DUP having put him into Downing Street and despite the new Prime Minister’s repeated public assurances to the contrary.

That night DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds told Newsnight that he was “quite relaxed about the way things are going” and “I think Boris Johnson knows what he is about”.

When asked about the possibility of Mr Johnson agreeing to an Irish Sea border, Mr Dodds, who had been chatting to Mr Johnson in the MPs’ dining room the previous night, said dismissively: “I don’t expect Boris Johnson to do anything of the sort”.

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Then came the betrayal and in the following weeks senior DUP figures found themselves on platforms in loyalist meetings from which the media were often excluded and suggestions of armed insurrection were raised from the floor.

In front of such crowds, the DUP was bullish, insisting that it would fight the deal and suggestions of a court challenge were raised.

Ultimately, December’s decisive General Election win for Mr Johnson meant the end of any Parliamentary route to defeating the Prime Minister’s deal and since then the pandemic has diverted attention from the countdown to when the new Irish Sea trading arrangements begin.

TUV leader Jim Allister has highlighted that the only prescribed circumstances in which the Northern Ireland Protocol can be revisited is where it’s implementation is causing “serious societal difficulties” and he has said that the DUP has the power “to create that very situation”.

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That would be a risky strategy, likely precipitating governmental chaos during Northern Ireland’s centenary.

The DUP’s arch-Brexiteer, Sammy Wilson, has not gone that far but he made clear over the weekend – in comments which seemed to be a direct repudiation of Mrs Foster’s – that “we are still arguing that in these negotiations the Withdrawal Agreement must be scrapped or at the very least, significantly changed”.

It is possible that Mrs Foster has made a calculated decision to accept what she believes is inevitable rather than risking the sort of “serious societal difficulties” possible if DUP ministers at Stormont attempt to frustrate the new border arrangements by refusing to cooperate.

But equally possible, and consistent with Mrs Foster’s approach to Brexit from the outset, is that the DUP leader who when she had power in London talked luridly about an Irish Sea border as a “blood red line” is now bereft of ideas and belatedly realises she got in far, far too deep.

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Arlene Foster makes clear she will implement the PM’s Brexit ‘betrayal act’ and ...

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