11:40

DUP Arlene Foster was due to ask Theresa May if her party can have a seat at the Brexit negotiations.

Foster was likely to raise that prospect with the prime minister today. Ahead of her phone call to May, the former first minister of Northern Ireland said:

There is a need for us to be directly involved.

Referring to the debacle earlier this week over the leaked document which suggested a post-Brexit deal for the Irish border based on a ‘regulatory alignment’ in terms of trade on the island, Foster said:

If we had been involved directly in the process, in the room, I don’t think we would have arrived at such a stark situation.

Foster’s party, of course, keeps May in 10 Downing Street thanks to that ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement the DUP maintains with the Tories since the general election.

The DUP leader also sought to repair some of the damaged relations with the Irish government today.

She described Taoiseach Leo Varadkar as a “friend” but accused him of taking the “Sinn Fein line” on Brexit talks.

Only last month Foster stood side by side with Varadkar at the war memorial in Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday - the spot where an IRA bomb killed 11 Protestant civilians on Poppy Day 1987. She had earlier praised Varadkar for becoming the first Irish premier to wear a poppy while he addressed the Dail in Dublin.

