Opposition to May’s deal is all about the backstop, say those in party’s Northern Irish heartlands

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Tory Brexiters who wonder how the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) ended up snagging Brexit will find a simple answer in the party’s heartlands: it’s the backstop, eejit.

The fear of a wedge being driven between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK trumps everything. A possible hammer blow to the economy, a rupture in the party’s relationship with farmers, business groups and Tory allies, a threat to Brexit itself – all are prices worth paying.

Because if the union is weakened and a united Ireland creeps closer, the type of Brexit, of if there is Brexit at all, matters not a whit.

“I call it breakfast,” said Patricia Aston, 57, a caterer and lifelong DUP voter. “I voted out, why I don’t know. I know nothing about it.”

Despite haziness on the details, Aston, like other DUP voters in Killyleagh, a village on the banks of Strangford Lough in County Down, wants the UK to leave the European Union and respect the result of the 2016 referendum. Across the Strangford constituency 23,383 voted to leave and 18,727 to remain, a sharp contrast with Northern Ireland’s overall vote to stay.

DUP supporters in Killyleagh are aggrieved and bewildered that Brexit has been delayed, perhaps fatally. They still want to see it happen.

But if the delay endures, or if the UK ends up with a soft Brexit inside a customs union, few seem inclined to blame the DUP or punish it at the polls.

“The party is standing by its political views,” said Roy Walsh, 62, a former Northern Ireland footballer of the year. “I don’t see them bending. Constitutionally it’s the right thing to do.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Theresa May and Arlene Foster visit a pottery n St Belleek, Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Photograph: Getty Images

The right thing because he agrees with the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, that the backstop, an insurance policy to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland embedded in the withdrawal agreement negotiated by Theresa May, would treat Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK and in effect trap it, alone, in the EU.

This analysis absolves the DUP’s decision to vote against and effectively kill the prime minister’s third attempt to pass the deal on Friday, despite pleadings from Brexiters for the party to “save Brexit”.

“Come on Aileen”, blared the Sun’s front page. “If they don’t go for it they could go from the Democratic Unionist party to the Deeply Unpopular party in one afternoon,” said an unnamed MP.

Unpopular with Downing Street and Westminster’s Brexiters, yes, but away from the sound and fury in London, life continued as usual in Killyleagh.

If there was rancour it was directed at Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, the party’s erstwhile Tory allies, now viewed as charlatans for switching sides and endorsing May’s deal amid Tory party leadership manoeuvring.

“Out to stab them in the back,” said Norman Fitzpatrick, 74, a grocer. “It’s horrendous, a farce.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Norman Fitzpatrick in his grocery shop in Killyleagh. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

He is an ardent Brexiter and would cheer crashing out with no deal, notwithstanding the EU provenance of much of his fruit and veg. He is also uncertain about details of the backstop. But he trusts the DUP to prioritise what counts. “If you believe in something you have to stand firm.”

Denis O’Neill, 73, a retired crane driver, lauded the party’s resolve, an echo of its “Ulster says no” response to power-sharing proposals in the 1980s and 1990s. “They’re determined,” he added.

DUP opposition to the backstop is genuine, even if overdone, said Jon Tonge, a politics professor at the University of Liverpool and co-author of a book on the party.

“They oppose several aspects of the backstop: the supposed weakening of the UK single market, via checks on goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland; don’t like the sole alignment of Northern Ireland to the EU single market, and point out that we cannot leave the backstop unilaterally.”

Sammy Wilson, Ian Paisley and other DUP MPs express visceral loathing for the EU. But that does not mean the party wants a hard Brexit, said Tonge.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The DUP’s Ian Paisley takes to the stage during The March to Leave protest in London on Friday. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

In last week’s indicative votes the party opposed the customs union option but abstained on the UK-wide customs union plus single market option because that would avoid the need for a backstop, he said. “They are hard anti-backstoppers, not hard Brexiteers.”

Northern Ireland’s traditionally unionist farming and business leaders have supported the backstop, saying it makes economic sense, and warned that killing May’s deal risks a disastrous no-deal exit. Downing Street has talked up the prospect of chaos leading to a referendum on Irish unity.

An unprecedented double-pincer of pressure. The party’s response? A shrug.

It thinks no deal is unlikely. And that if it happens the dire warnings will prove overblown, the economy will adapt and moderate nationalists and anxious unionists will settle down, said Peter Weir, a Stormont assembly member. “I wouldn’t exaggerate the impact.”

Critics call this reckless complacency. But most observers agree the DUP has little reason to fear a general election that would be fought on constitutional lines, rallying unionists to their banner.

Rival unionist parties are too small and enfeebled to siphon many votes and the DUP could nab the independent MP Sylvia Hermon’s North Down seat, raising its Westminster representation to 11, said Tonge. “So the DUP is largely insulated.”

Kellie Armstrong, an Alliance party assembly member for Strangford, said the DUP may suffer in local elections but that “dog-whistle politics” would protect it in a general election. “I’d be expecting the DUP to do well.”

Northern Ireland’s political logic has often perplexed and infuriated the House of Commons. Now it is the turn of Brexiters to seethe that Ulster means woe.