EU officials involved in negotiating the Northern Ireland backstop admitted afterwards that they couldn’t believe the British had signed up to it. “We knew it would not be acceptable to the unionists,” one said.

Months on, that message still seems to be struggling to get through in Westminster. Is it really so hard to understand why those whose entire existence is founded on preserving the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland would stand firm against a proposal which, in their eyes, fatally threatens it?

The DUP isn’t in politics to make life easier for itself, but to do what it regards as the right thing, however hard. That a third of the party’s members and representatives belong to the Free Presbyterian church, which makes up less than one per cent of the population in Northern Ireland, comes into that.

Calvinists don’t expect life to be easy, but an unrelenting struggle, full of pain and sacrifice. Satisfaction comes from steadfastly holding to what you know to be true. The idea of holding one’s nose and voting for a bad deal is not a natural mindset for people in contested territory, where every compromise, however tempting, threatens eventual ruin.

Unionists don’t look at fine promises and poetic interpretations. They read the actual words of agreements. The peace process was psychologically disquieting for them because it came from a Blairite mindset of constructive ambiguity which bent and blurred truth. Now they’re faced with another fudge.