Maybe I was wrong (words I probably don’t say enough). I thought the DUP would be fairly pragmatic about the terms of the ‘backstop’ designed to keep open the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland till a permanent solution was found (stop smirking).
So when I learned that the draft backstop deal agreed on Tuesday by UK and EU officials contained ‘only’ a requirement for additional physical checks in and around the Irish Sea on agriculture and food, I thought the DUP could probably live with that.
How so? Well there are already such checks. And what is being proposed is simply an increase from 10 per cent to 100 per cent of checks on livestock and foods to verify them as healthy and conforming to EU standards. It didn’t look to me like the great betrayal the DUP fears most, namely the creation of a NEW border between the mainland of GB and NI.
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