If the DUP throw a spanner in the works now, it’s not just Boris they’ll harm... it’s Britain

AS MY fingers beat on the keyboard, it’s not clear whether Boris Johnson has got a deal, or if it will be sabotaged by the combined (though opposed) forces of the EU and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.

Something is certain, though. Mr Johnson has recently played a blinder.

Granted, there was the unnecessary drama of his aborted prorogation of Parliament — unnecessary because, at best, he could have wrested only five or six days of sittings from MPs.

For attempting to secure that puny reward, he earned the redoubled contempt of the metropolitan classes and was repeatedly called a dictator, even though he was soon overruled by the Supreme Court. This admonishment he meekly accepted. Some dictator!

Radiates

Since then, the man who is supposedly unable to master detail and has been widely described as lazy and chaotic has got close — I shall go no further — to reaching a momentous and complex deal with Brussels.

And he has done so despite the impediments of the so- called Benn Act (which gives the EU the comfort of disregarding any threat of No Deal) and a parliamentary majority of minus 45.

A normal politician in such circumstances might turn over and die in a ditch, to adapt Boris’s phrase. But he seems unstoppable. After every setback he radiates positivity and exudes (excepting one ill-tempered marathon session in the Commons) good humour.

I don’t doubt there will be problems in the next 72 hours or so, nor that, in the longer term, Boris may shoot off the rails and have to be towed back to No 10.

But for the moment I take off my hat to him. Who would have guessed that any prime minister attempting a compromise deal — let’s be clear, that’s what is under discussion — would have won over most Tories in the hard-line ERG group?

After all, he cleverly appointed their leader, Jacob Rees- Mogg, a Cabinet minister, and put Priti Patel, another red- in- tooth- andclaw Brexiteer, in the Home Office. Better in the tent than outside.

Even hard nuts such as Steve Baker, new chief of the ERG, and his sidekick, the pugnacious Mark Francois, have emerged from sessions with the PM smiling serenely like novice monks.

Unlike Theresa May, who often took the Democratic Unionist Party ( DUP) for granted, the Prime Minister has kept its representatives in the loop and listens to their anxieties. He did so again yesterday when he met Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds, the party’s leader and deputy.

Of course, timing is on his side. For one thing, the ERG diehards, who were instrumental in seeing off Mrs May’s deal, realise that to do the same to Boris’s would risk a second referendum and the probable demise of Brexit.

Meanwhile, the country is suffering from a kind of neurotic fatigue. Mr Johnson understands that. His pledge to leave the EU ‘do or die’ by October 31 has resonated with many, including Remainers.

In fact, his promise that the UK will withdraw by that date has been repeated so often that I suspect it has become a bigger issue for many voters than the exact terms of our departure.

Most people just want to get out. According to a ComRes poll for ITN (with a massive pool of 26,000 people, far larger than for a normal poll), 54 per cent of respondents wanted Brexit delivered. That is more than the 52 per cent who voted for it in 2016.

So it’s no surprise that Boris’s sense of ‘can do’ is appreciated by voters frustrated by the tricks and shenanigan sofa Remain er dominated Parliament that declines to honour the outcome of the referendum.

The latest YouGov poll puts the Tories at 37 per cent, 15 points ahead of Labour. Mr Johnson is rated the best prime minister by 43 per cent of respondents, compared with a measly 21 per cent for Mr Corbyn.

Among working-class voters, Boris has an amazing 44 to 17 per cent lead over Jeremy Corbyn. No wonder Labour strategists are so dismayed by the prospect of an election.

Some commentators have concentrated on the possible loss of Tory seats in London, where there is a Remainer majority. I expect they will forfeit a number of seats there.

But such losses could be more than made up for by gains in Leave- supporting areas. For example, YouGov reports a Tory lead of four points over Labour in Wales, that party’s traditional heartland. If this swing affected all Welsh seats, the Conservatives could snatch 17 of them.

I know. I may be running away with myself. But it is surely plain that Boris’s optimism — his famous ‘boosterism’ — is going down well in large parts of the country.

Veto

What a prize! Brexit delivered at last, and the unfathomable perils of No Deal avoided. The Marxist Corbynistas confounded, giving Labour a chance to redefine itself as a moderate, mainstream party.

There is grit in the oyster, of course, which is the DUP, whose support the PM needs for any deal. It is concerned by the prospect of there being no consent mechanism for any special new customs relationship Northern Ireland may have with the Irish Republic and the EU after Brexit.

The DUP has a point. Admittedly, I’m peering through the mists, since the details are not yet known. But it seems Brussels doesn’t want to give the DUP majority in Stormont ( the Northern Ireland assembly, now in abeyance) a veto on new arrangements.

On the other hand, the nationalist community in Northern Ireland (backed up by the Republic, and so by Brussels) has not unreasonable qualms that the DUP might use its veto to override their interests.

Will the DUP upset Boris’s applecart at the eleventh hour? One can understand its worry that the province’s unique new relationship with the EU — currently under discussion in Brussels — might weaken its bonds with Britain.

Yet many of the DUP’s own supporters in the business and farming communities pragmatically favour the continuation of an easy flow of cross-border trade with the Republic.

Optimism

Moreover, the Leave vote in Northern Ireland was 44.2 per cent, the third lowest of any UK nation or region after Scotland and London. If DUP intransigence is the stumbling block to the PM’s deal, it won’t be speaking for a majority in the province.

And if Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds throw a spanner in the works, they will be acting against the interests of the people of Britain — the country they say they love.

Let’s hope good sense, and the promise of yet more billions being thrown by Westminster at the Northern Irish economy, will swing the DUP behind the deal. If not, it’s dead — the more so as extreme ERG Tories would then side with the DUP.

What would follow would be more months of economic uncertainty and a possible second referendum. Mr Johnson will inevitably be weakened if he can’t meet his October 31 deadline, though by how much is unclear. The beneficiary of such failure would be the Labour leader.

Can Boris pull it off? We’ve seen a lot of his infectious optimism and good cheer in recent weeks. With these qualities he can reunite our divided country. Crabby, confiscatory Jeremy Corbyn would only divide it further.