1:26 p.m. ET, October 16, 2019
The DUP's precarious position
Analysis from CNN's International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson
File picture of Boris Johnson and DUP leader Arlene Foster on July 2, 2019 in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
No political party has more at stake in Brexit negotiations than Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
As talks teeter on the cusp of calamity or consensus, the DUP face the toughest choice in their history: compromise on Northern Ireland’s connection to the UK.
Brexit talks pivot on customs and consensus, or as DUP leader Arlene Foster frames it “respect of [the] constitutional and economic place of Northern Ireland in UK.” In real terms that appears to be coming down to what is euphemistically termed a border down the Irish Sea separating Northern Ireland and Great Britain, something the DUP have rejected before.
For decades the DUP have been a bastion for the province’s protestant Unionists resistant to a rising tide Irish nationalism. Past leaders grew infamous with chants of “no surrender,” determined to keep Northern Ireland an inseparable part of the United Kingdom.
Today’s DUP leaders have got more face time in the past few days with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson than most members of his Cabinet as he seeks to sooth their jangled nerves.
For Johnson, Brexit is a political calculation. Polls in his party a few months ago revealed they’d dump the DUP if that’s what it took to get Brexit done even though the herculean task of getting Brexit through Parliament becomes nigh impossible without them.
The EU demands, and Johnson agrees, that Northern Ireland must maintain an open border with the Republic of Ireland, as written in the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement that ended decades of sectarian bloodshed.
The DUP sense an existential threat, not just for the party, but on the value they hold dearest, an unbreakable bond with Britain.
Whether the Irish border of significance separating the EU and UK becomes Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland (RoI) border or Island of Ireland, RoI/GB border gets to centuries of history, of family narratives, of volatile parades and traditions going back to Battle of Boyne (1689), when Protestant King William of Orange triumphed over Catholic forces.
This weight of history sits on the DUP’s shoulders alongside a fear of a future in a United Ireland. Meanwhile the UUP, their NI Unionist political rivals breathe down their neck hoping to reap the spoils of a bad DUP decision.
Many of their voters are farmers and small businessmen whose livelihoods depend on an open border with Ireland. It’s counterintuitive to the party’s raison d’etre yet feeds in to fears of a slow slide towards a united Ireland.
If talks collapse, Northern Ireland nationalist politicians demand a “border poll,” in essence a vote to get rid of the border forever, and detach Northern Ireland from the UK.
The dilemma for the DUP seem multiple and inescapable: Give Johnson too much political wiggle room and they will be eaten by their own but miscalculate and a united Ireland edges closer.
Their voters know no amount of history will put food on their table, pragmatism beckons, and that for the DUP has always been one of their toughest challenges.