Editor’s Note: Nic Robertson is CNN’s international diplomatic editor. The opinions in this article belong to the author.
As Theresa May tries desperately to break the Brexit deadlock, a compelling narrative is emerging in London. If May can win the approval of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, she can get her hardline Conservative Brexiteers on board.
For some, the DUP is seen as a tail wagging the hardline Brexit dog.
As recently as Wednesday, May’s negotiators have been trying to wrestle final concessions from the EU to appease both the DUP and Brexiteers, but to no avail.
It’s possible that the DUP will be harder to convince.
Their imperative is not a safe Brexit, but to block a united Ireland and keep the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland safely intact.
History shows that the DUP will vote for whatever makes a united Ireland least likely, and then they will find the political camouflage to mask their intentions.
No British government has previously found a leash capable of bringing the DUP to heel.
The DUP didn’t back the Good Friday agreement in 1998, even though 70% of Northern Ireland’s voters did. Yet in the two decades since, they have been rewarded royally, emerging the biggest political party in Northern Ireland, and today hold power over May’s minority government through a supply and confidence deal agreed in 2017.
Since then, their influence has grown stronger. To think that they will not use this leverage to their fullest ability is to misunderstand their mindset.
Their biggest fear is a United Ireland. A frictionless border as exists today and as dictated by the 1998 good Friday agreement is a glide path out of the UK.
For the DUP, the backstop risks accelerating that process.
Should Northern Ireland have a different customs arrangement with the EU than mainland UK, as is envisaged, then the Union is weakened as divergence sets in and the Irish Sea becomes a border between the province and mainland UK.
This is why the DUP’s Westminster spokesman, Sammy Wilson MP, told me a few weeks ago they would be very happy with a no-deal Brexit.
The party line remains that they want an open seamless border, but that just doesn’t jive with their history or their interest.
Although a so-called border poll as demanded by Sinn Fein – and enshrined in the Good Friday agreement – would today not win enough votes today to wrench Northern Ireland from Britain’s historic clutches, the demographics and economic logic for it is nudging in that direction.
The backstop presents an opportunity to put a brake on this.
Indeed, some future generation may see Brexit, the backstop, and the DUP as a last gasp of Unionists to uphold the inviolability of the Union: recent polling suggests the DUP are trying to turn a tide that may one day sink them.
A poll by The Irish Times newspaper reveals that more than half of Unionist voters are dissatisfied with the DUP’s leader, Arlene Foster’s, handling of Brexit, and two thirds of people questioned are unhappy with the way the DUP is handling Northern Ireland’s interests in Westminster.
It is striking that the majority of Northern Ireland’s voters, 56%, opted to remain in the EU. The DUP was the only mainstream party to come out in favor of leaving.
By contrast, Mike Nesbitt, a recent former leader of the more centrist Unionist party, the Ulster Unionists, now believes the DUP scored an own goal over Brexit:
“The status of Northern Ireland is back on the political agenda for the first time in 21 years. It doesn’t mean that United Ireland is inevitable, but it does mean that Brexit could be possibly the biggest own goal that Unionism had in the last 100 years.”
Nesbitt’s former fellow Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, not only backed the Good Friday agreement, but it landed him a Nobel Peace Prize for his vision and compromise.
Bizarrely, in the uncompromising parochial tribal politics of the province, he was dispatched to political ignominy for compromising with the enemy. He and his party’s fortunes became eclipsed by the blinkered narrative of Unionism: remain part of the UK at all costs.
Despite the so-called peace dividend, an improved economy for the province, Trimble has watched as his rivals, the hardline DUP, scores electoral success after success.
Today, the UUP has no MPs in the House of Commons.
Despite the recent polling, the DUP has every reason to believe intransigence is its best reward.
Since the get go on Brexit, it has been clear: no deal that weakens the Union will get its support. And right now, it’s saying that means the backstop must change.
It insists the withdrawal agreement be opened up and legally binding change made, or that some kind of legal declaration is made, making the backstop non-permanent. To date, the EU has not played ball.
And it’s here that the line exists. If the DUP’s tail won’t wag, it seems the hardline Brexiteers will keep their teeth firmly sunk in May’s leg, holding her back from the kind of compromise Trimble might have made 20 years ago.
Unlike Trimble, however, she knows her fate already. Whatever the outcome of Brexit, she has promised her party that she won’t lead it into the next election.
The bigger problem for her is how does she leave behind a Conservative Party that can stay together and remain relevant?
As the UUP know, once in the political wilderness it is hard to come back, a lesson no one should doubt gets raised every time the DUP leadership calculates its next move.
The danger for May, with just weeks to go until the Brexit deadline, is that no move is as deadly for her as anything else.