Opinion

ANALYSIS: The DUP should have seen the warning signs ahead of backing Boris's proposals...

WE know the DUP didn't expect the Leave campaign to be victorious in 2016 EU referendum and that the party therefore had no strategy in place for delivering Brexit against the will of a majority of people in Northern Ireland, a significant minority of who are unionists. Nobody doubts the sincerity of some of the DUP's more high profile figures' euroscepticism but antipathy towards Brussels within the party isn't universal. Anyone with the slightest bit of foresight would have realised that the impact of coming out of Europe on the north's business and agriculture sectors – traditionally key DUP constituencies – would be negative.

Yet having historically adopted an anti-EU policy and campaigned for Brexit, the party's direction of travel was predetermined and anybody who voiced dissent risked being labelled a 'Lundy'.

It could be argued that initially pursuing a strategy to leave the EU alongside Theresa May's Conservative government proved reasonably straightforward. There was a begrudging acceptance, even among some of Brexit's fiercest opponents, that the UK was leaving the EU and despite the then Tory leader's pledge to also leave the single market and Customs Union, it seemed she was looking for a sensible withdrawal deal that would safeguard an open border in Ireland.

But as we know Mrs May's efforts came to nothing, thanks in part to the DUP, which was fervent in its opposition to anything that it felt undermined the UK's constitutional integrity. Despite support for the backstop among the north's business groups and non-unionist political parties, who warned of catastrophic consequences if there was a hard border, the DUP stuck to its guns and helped precipitate Mrs May's demise.

While the party has yet to concede that it either misread or was unconcerned by the mood of businesses when it rejected the draft withdrawal agreement, we can safely assume that there was a degree of soul searching over the summer months and a realisation that compromise was necessary in order to avoid no-deal, a scenario that may well suit the party's more extreme eurosceptic elements but would damage businesses and potentially alienate many DUP voters.

The fruits of weeks of negotiations between the DUP and new Tory leader Boris Johnson were unveiled earlier this week, less than a month before the UK's scheduled departure from the EU. The response to what the British prime minister tabled was categorical – beyond the two parties who drafted the proposals, they were universally rejected. Other unionists shunned the proposals on the basis that the DUP had U-turned on its opposition to a 'border in the Irish Sea', while unpalatable to non-unionists were the idea of customs checks on goods crossing the border and a plan to give Stormont – or more accurately the DUP – a veto over whether Northern Ireland remained aligned to the single market.

It appears the DUP has again made a grave miscalculation and failed to understand the depth of opposition – based on practicalities rather than ideology – to any measures that would hinder cross-border trade. The alarm bells should've gone off a matter of weeks ago, if not before, when a Leave-voting dairy farmer who once appeared alongside Arlene Foster in a party political broadcast, voiced reservations over Brexit and regrets about how he voted. But the DUP is nothing if not obstinate, some say arrogant, and was determined to put its stamp on Boris Johnson's final pitch to the EU, even if that meant derision from all sides.

The party now finds itself having to defend the indefensible, on one flank attempting to justify a climbdown and on the other hitching itself to plan that will never fly. Its response has been to deflect criticism with well-worn anti-Dublin tropes. The remarks from Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney were arguably ill-judged given the context and played into the DUP's hands but the reaction from Foster and her deputy was over the top, suggesting they've been rattled, not so much by the taoiseach and tánaiste's rhetoric but by the breadth of opposition to the British prime minister's proposals.

The DUP has come through many crises in its time, none of which have impacted on its long term electoral performance. Any outrage at Irisgate, RHI, Nama, Red Sky and Ian Paisley's globetrotting has had no lasting impact at the polls. Yet Brexit has shown that what we long assumed were political certainties are anything but and opinion can shift relatively quickly. If this week turns out to be a watershed and there are many more 'dairy farmer moments' in which the DUP's game plan is increasingly regarded as a self-harm strategy, they can't claim they didn't see the warning signs.