Will the Windsor Framework prove the undoing of Jeffrey Donaldson and the DUP? The mood music amongst some of the louder elements of this fractious political tribe points to trouble ahead.
The premature champagne corks released in London and Brussels earlier this week were greeted with stony silence in the unionist heartlands. The party’s public position – and that of its leader – is that it is still chewing through the document. Though Donaldson did not issue an outright no, he did say some issues remained with what had been agreed by the UK and EU.
However, the pressure on Donaldson to respond in the negative has been cranked up by an intervention from some of the DUP’s more outspoken and mischievous types. Ian Paisley – who was first out the blocks in saying the deal ‘didn’t cut the mustard’ – has gone further, lending his name to the foreword of an analysis of the deal by the Centre for Union Studies which recommends that unionism rejects it.
This is a profound political headache for Jeffrey Donaldson
The analysis – which was conducted by John Larkin KC, the former Attorney General for Northern Ireland – has concluded that the Windsor Framework is not compatible with the Act of Union, specifically, the article which guarantees ‘unfettered trade on the same footing between and within all parts of the UK’.
A similar criticism of the Framework’s impact on intra-UK trade was also issued by Donaldson’s predecessor as DUP leader at Westminster, Nigel Dodds.
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