With Stephen Meyler

#DUP

#PrEP

À LA CARTE

UK Northern Ireland’s largest party, the DUP, has spent a lot of time during the first stage of the Brexit negotiations asserting the indivisibility of the six counties from the rest of the UK. Fair enough, as that is what its electorate want. Any ideas about the future border (hard, soft or lumpy) somehow being in the Irish Sea are decried as impossible by Arlene Foster and her ten MPs. Once again, only good and proper representation of the people who elected them. Even better for the DUP, who are heeded at Westminster as much as the absentee Sinn Fein MPs when there’s a majority government in power, Theresa May’s government depends on those ten MPs to stay in the driving seat in these most crucial of times. Few pundits give the Tories much chance of improving their numbers if they go before some version of Brexit actually happens.