It isn’t about the money, says angry Arlene as she hits back over bribe jibe
Arlene Foster always knew she was going to be the Ulster politician in the big picture at Stormont yesterday, as she spurned Theresa May’s charm offensive on day one of her UK tour to sell her Brexit deal.
But the DUP leader probably didn’t expect to find herself using the word “offensive” in a totally different context as she tried to bat away a billion pound question from a national broadcaster.
He wanted to know if her party’s support could be bought off by the Prime Minister with more financial inducements like the ones offered in the confidence and supply agreement to prop up the Tory government.
Channel 4’s straight-talking political correspondent Michael Crick — who has famously run foul of politicians like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Michael Heseltine — actually tossed out the word “bribe” to the former First Minister before she went into a meeting at Stormont House with the Prime Minister.
And a clearly bristling Mrs Foster denied that the DUP had taken a bribe in the first place over the confidence and supply agreement — which she insisted was for all of the people of Northern Ireland.
“Some of that money has already been delivered,” she said. “We look forward to the rest of that money being delivered for all of the people of Northern Ireland.”
Crick countered immediately. “So if they offered another two billion say, or three billion?”
And Mrs Foster quickly rounded on Crick again.
“It is quite offensive actually to raise this in terms of money. We are talking about the constitutional and economic long term future of Northern Ireland. So the answer is no.”
Mrs May yesterday launched a two week UK tour which she believes can help her win the crucial vote in the House of Commons on December 11 on her Brexit deal.
But as the Prime Minister searched for more people to back her, even the gods, it seemed, were conspiring against her yesterday as she tried to ride out the Brexit storm at Stormont.
The heavens had opened to rain down on her parade from the moment she arrived here on the second leg of her whistlestop tour in a desperate bid to drum up support for her deal, which has found fewer fair weather friends than she’d hoped.
The beleaguered architect of the Brexit deal was under no illusions about what she was going to hear from the divided politicians as her cavalcade of cars drove up the rain-sodden road to Stormont House.
Arlene Foster’s pre-talks press conference couldn’t have made the outlook on the Stormont horizon any brighter for Mrs May.
She accused her supposed ally of wasting her time by taking her Brexit “propaganda” bandwagon on the road around the UK when she knew that she couldn’t get the deal through the House of Commons.
She said she wanted to know what Mrs May planned to do after losing the vote and dismissed what she was doing to rally support as a “charade”.
Mrs Foster said that opposition to Mrs May’s deal at Westminster was “coalescing” around the Irish border backstop proposal.
“So if she ditches the backstop there is every reason to believe that this withdrawal agreement could go through,” she added.
Unusually, Mrs Foster and the other Stormont political parties faced the media in the Long Gallery in Parliament Buildings instead of the Great Hall downstairs, which was being readied for an awards ceremony to find Northern Ireland’s best civil servants in a year that has been fraught with difficulties for people trying to deliver public services here.
But it was nothing compared to what Mrs May is striving to do to deliver her Brexit deal, which she told everyone she met was a good one for Northern Ireland.
Mrs May also talked at Stormont with Sinn Fein, SDLP and Alliance politicians, who are all opposed to Brexit but who have said the PM’s deal is the least worst option.
She also met the Ulster Unionists.
Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald rejected a call from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar for her MPs to take their seats in the House of Commons to show they were serious about Brexit.
She said: “Any notion that Sinn Fein MPs could ride in on their chargers and stop Brexit and save Mrs May are politically fanciful, I would go so far as to say politically illiterate.
“We are abstentionists. We are Irish republicans.
“We believe, as the nationalist people of this island believe, our decisions are best taken by democratic institutions on this island.”
The SDLP’s Colum Eastwood said it was important to save rather than ditch the backstop as the DUP had argued and he questioned the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s assessment of Brexit.
Mr Eastwood said: “I want to stop Brexit. There is no good Brexit.
“But equally I need to say to people very, very clearly — and particularly to Jeremy Corbyn who I think has called this wrong because he is starting to talk about the border down the Irish Sea and the integrity of the United Kingdom — this is not about any of that.
“This is about economics, this is about protecting people here from a hard border.”
The Alliance Party’s Stephen Farry said people here wanted to see a backstop in place as the bottom line, an insurance policy and a safety net that could be built upon in terms of a wider future deal.
“It is important that we do bank the backstop,” he said.
“There can’t be any context in which that (the backstop) can be taken off the table, renegotiated, unpicked. It is absolutely integral to any withdrawal agreement.”
Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann said his message to Mrs May was to take more time to put plans in place for the extension of Article 50 under which the UK’s departure date has been fixed for March 29 next year, to allow further negotiations towards a workable deal.
“One thing we don’t want and we realise doesn’t work for Northern Ireland is no deal.”