What Angela Merkel and the DUP have in common

The Brexit strategies of the past two prime ministers have been predicated on the assumption that people will give up on their fundamental beliefs just because Downing Street wants them to.

By Patrick Maguire

The DUP revel in bearing bad news for the government, and so it is today. As attempts to find a compromise on the Irish border drag on, both Arlene Foster and Jeffrey Donaldson, the party’s chief whip, have warned that the United Kingdom is heading for a no-deal Brexit.

Both say the blame lies with the Irish government, which is insisting that the backstop – the legal mechanism that would prevent a hardening of the frontier in the event a trade deal didn’t keep it open by keeping the UK in a customs union with the EU – can only be subject to a review mechanism and not the unilateral break clause or time limit that the DUP and Tory Brexiteers want.