May’s push for Irish border deal ends in chaos

BRITAIN: British Prime Minister Theresa May’s attempt to reach a Brexit deal on the Irish border fell apart yesterday after a damaging public row with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) over Northern Ireland’s future.

On an extraordinary day in Brussels, European Union leaders raised expectations that a deal on the terms of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal was about to be reached, only for May to return empty-handed following a serious miscalculation over the DUP’S response to a key negotiating point.

It leaves her with just 10 days to salvage a deal before the European Council meets next week to discuss whether trade talks can start. She is now likely to face demands from MPS to address the House of Commons to explain exactly what went wrong.

May was forced to leave a lunch with Jean-claude Juncker, the European Commission president, to telephone Arlene Foster after the DUP leader made clear in a televised statement that she would not stand for what was being proposed.

Foster, on whose support May relies for her parliamentary majority, laid down the law to the prime minister, saying she would not agree to a proposal that Northern Ireland would maintain ‘‘regulatory alignment’’ with the Republic of Ireland after Brexit.

Sammy Wilson, a DUP MP, said regulatory alignment was ‘‘simply Eu-speak for keeping Northern Ireland inside the customs union and inside the single market’’. He added: ‘‘It’s a Unionist nightmare.’’

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, and Carwyn Jones, the Welsh First Minister, seized on the phrase to insist that if Ulster could have special treatment, Scotland and Wales should have their own deals too, as an air of chaos descended over the talks.

Downing Street insisted that May had never agreed to the contested phrase, which was leaked to Irish media in an apparent attempt to force her hand.

But the leak caused such concern for the DUP that Foster felt she had ‘‘no choice’’ but to pull the plug on the talks, after reassuring her supporters that she would not stand for anything that meant Northern Ireland left the EU on different terms from mainland Britain. It means May must return to Brussels tomorrow to carry on with the talks after the EU agreed to extend a deadline that expired yesterday for an agreement to be reached.

Both May and Juncker said they remained ‘‘confident’’ that Britain could satisfy the EU’S definition of ‘‘satisfactory progress’’ being made on the Irish border, citizens’ rights and the ‘‘divorce bill’’ in time for trade talks to be approved at next week’s European Council meeting.

But Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said the timing was ‘‘getting very tight’’.

Downing Street insisted May had never expected a deal to be reached yesterday, having consistently said the meetings with Juncker and Tusk were just a ‘‘staging post’’.

However, she had become so confident of a deal being agreed that she had booked several hours of parliamentary time today to set out the terms of the agreement in the Commons.

Tusk, meanwhile, said he had been ‘‘ready to present draft EU27 guidelines tomorrow for Brexit talks on transition and future’’, only for the UK and the commission to ask for more time.