The Guardian: Arlene Foster signals DUP shift on Northern Ireland border issue

In a break with previous rhetoric where she has strongly opposed treating the region differently to the rest of the UK, Foster said the final deal would have to recognise Northern Ireland’s unique historical and geographical position and the fact it will be the UK’s only land border with the EU.

Asked by reporters if it was possible to see Northern Ireland-only solutions that would not affect the constitutional link with Great Britain, she replied: “Well I hope so.” [...]

She made clear that her idea of an acceptable Northern Ireland-only solution was different to mooted proposals for a Northern Ireland-only backstop, which she said “would bring about customs [checks] between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and that is unconstitutional and undemocratic”. [...]

Echoing words of the party’s chief whip Sir Jeffrey Donaldson earlier this week, she said the solution lay in a joint letter she co-authored with the late leader of Sinn Féin, Martin McGuinness, in August 2016, a document rarely referred to by the DUP in the past two years.

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Bloomberg: What If Ireland Scuppers Theresa May's Brexit Deal?

If Arlene Foster's Democratic Unionist Party stymies that agreement, it would mark an unprecedented win for what was once a fringe group on the British political scene. But in the long term it could actually promote the very idea the DUP opposes above all else: a united Ireland. While the party supports Brexit, Northern Ireland voted 56 percent in favor of remaining in the EU, well above the national 48 percent remain vote. [...]

Of course, some checks already exist. But she is threatening to vote down the budget this month if she’s unhappy with what May agrees at an EU summit next week. That might not topple the government – but it would make it very tricky to govern, and potentially impossible if hardline Conservative Brexiters also decide to rebel.[...]

Negotiations over inquests into what are referred to as “legacy” issues have repeatedly bedeviled co-operation. More than 100 “peace walls” still separate Catholic and Protestant communities; the plan to remove them by 2023 looks wildly optimistic right now. Efforts to integrate an education system divided along religious lines have faltered. Public-sector housing estates are also deeply divided.[...]

“Neither Sinn Fein nor the DUP truly believe in a settlement based on multiple identities or pooled sovereignty – the kind facilitated by EU membership,” according to Matt O’Toole, a Northern Irishman who was chief press officer for Europe at 10 Downing Street during the referendum campaign. “Both now want to achieve something from Brexit that is less of a compromise than what existed before.”

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The Atlantic: The Incredible Staying Power of Theresa May

But perhaps the greatest challenge to May’s Brexit plan didn’t come from her party at all. Arlene Foster, the leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party, which is currently propping up May’s government in Westminster, offered a stern warning that her party would not support a Brexit deal that puts any divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., including a customs border in the Irish sea or a special customs union for Belfast alone. This, Foster said, would be the DUP’s “blood red” line.

For all the divisions over Brexit that remain within the party, May’s hold to the leadership appears to be safe—at least for now. When all was said and done, even some of the prime minister’s staunchest critics conceded that her speech had bought her time to hammer out a deal, even if didn’t necessarily evoke full-fledged support for it. And while critics of Chequers are unlikely to change their mind anytime soon, they at least seem to agree that now wouldn’t be the right time to try and trigger a leadership election to push May out. [...]

A recent poll found that the Conservatives were more likely to win the next general election under May than other potential leadership rivals right now—a belief that also seems to have buoyed tacit support for May to remain in her role. But even those who have thrown their support behind the prime minister for now have conceded that this support may be time-limited. “I just think politics is a short-term game,” the House of Commons Leader and Conservative lawmaker Andrea Leadsom said Wednesday when asked whether the party would support the prime minister in the next election. “A week changes a lot. I think she’s had a fantastic day today.”

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The Guardian: The DUP is a party that loves power but hates pesky responsibility

There are few pronouncements from the DUP that can be understood unless heard from the perspective of a DUP stalwart. And this is a party that knows its supporters. Nearly a third of its members are Free Presbyterians – a denomination (founded by the late Ian Paisley) which constitutes just about 0.6% of the population in Northern Ireland.

The DUP is revelling in its moment in the limelight because it has no long-term strategy for Northern Ireland – it has no motivation to have one. In the long-term – so a crude (and I believe misguided) reading of demographic trends would suggest – unionists are outnumbered and thus outvoted into a united Ireland. The DUP perpetuates the idea that unionism’s position is precarious in order to bolster the rationale for its uncompromising stance.

Why sit in Stormont making unpopular decisions about budgets and tedious policy decisions about those schools and hospitals when you can instead concentrate on Westminster? There, at least, you don’t have to share anything with Sinn Féin. And from there you can keep the whole of Europe waiting for you to give a limp thumbs up to Theresa May’s Brexit deal. And yet, the DUP’s decision to shrug off the pesky responsibility of devolved government has a material, crushing effect on Northern Ireland, most particularly on its young.

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The New York Review of Books: Theresa May’s Blue Monday

Yet she found herself entirely outmaneuvered. The British had assumed that the Irish could be relied on to agree that “sufficient progress” had been made even when there was nothing on the table but bland assurances of “no return to the borders of the past.” This was a serious miscalculation, though an understandable one. Britain has always had the upper hand in its relations with Ireland. It was completely unprepared for the reality that Brexit is creating: a rapid waning of British diplomatic power. The Irish government knew that it had all of the other twenty-six EU member states, and the European Parliament, on its side. Since the negotiation process got under way in April, the Europeans have made it clear that their position is Ireland’s position. Britain is isolated; Ireland has powerful allies.

The reasons for this European solidarity with Ireland are a mixture of idealism and realpolitik. On the one hand, the EU genuinely wants to protect the Belfast Agreement and the Irish peace process. For all its problems, that process is a great reminder of the EU’s own primary purpose, which is to end the threat of war in Europe. On the other hand, siding so strongly with Ireland is a very effective way of admonishing the British about what they are abandoning with Brexit—the protection and support of a large multinational institution. There is a simple message: Ireland is one of us and Britain is not. We look after our own.

Britain’s agreement to accept Ireland’s demands is an expression of its weakness: it can’t even bully little Ireland anymore. And this would have been bad enough for one day. But there was another humiliation in store. Having backed down, May was then peremptorily informed that she was not even allowed to back down. She left her lunch with the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, to take a phone call from the DUP’s Arlene Foster, who told her that the deal she had just made was unacceptable. May then had to go back in and tell Juncker that she could not agree to what she had just agreed to. It is a scarcely credible position for a once great state to find itself in: its leader does not even have the power to conduct a dignified retreat.

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