OK – stall the wedding, as Sean Coyle might have said before the BBC dumped him. Put the champagne on ice. It now appears that the happy ending to Brexit has at best been postponed and at worst cancelled.
Jim Shannon, he of the DUP, has said it plain and straight: “It is simple. Are we being treated the same as England? No, we are not. Therefore if we are not being treated the same as England, then we are not going to accept it.”
It’s tempting to ask oneself why he said ‘England’ and not ‘the rest of the UK.” Maybe Jim has a nervous feeling that Scotland and Wales, the other two bits, might be starting to rattle and even look like they could detach from Mother.
What Jim is objecting to is that, although our fetid little nest would leave the EU customs union, the UK would operate EU customs and tariffs on goods moving between Britain and our f l n. Could it be that he doesn’t trust Boris to collect a newspaper, never mind a tariff?
Not to be outdone, the real leader of the DUP Nigel Dodds has declared in that twinkle-eyed, charming way he has, “Northern Ireland must stay in a full UK customs union, full stop.”
Could it be that there’s dissension within the ranks of the DUP? Last week Arlene seemed prepared to tolerate the proverbial border in the Irish Sea, when Boris presented his latest wheeze, which would have kept our f l n in the single market. Maybe Jim and Nigel think Arlene is a bit mixed up. Or maybe it’s that they fear being “trapped” in the EU indefinitely. It’s like being trapped in one of those five-star hotels Ian Paisley Jr endured, courtesy of the Sri Lankans. Or so it’s alleged.
I think, on this grey Monday morning in October, that the DUP should take their lead, not from Jim or Nigel, not even from Arlene. They should take it from a mighty warrior from the ERG. Step forward, Jacob Rees-Mogg: ‘There’s a line from Churchill saying that he often had to eat his words and he found it to be a very nourishing diet – and that is something that happens in politics.”
When is a lie not a lie? When it’s eaten words.
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