The DUP may live to regret stealing a £1billion march on the rest of Britain

bung out of Theresa May to boost spending in the province (already the most heavily subsidised part of the UK).

They can’t have bargained on a moral defeat at the same time but that is what has happened.

It will not stop there. The Orange Order may think themselves the epitome of Britishness but they are alien to the Britishness of the home counties. If there were Orange marches in Guildford and Maidstone, you

can be pretty sure there would be no DUP-Tory deal now. The question is: Will the marches be next to come under Westminster scrutiny?

A vote in Westminster could not stop marching in Northern Ireland or Scotland.

Different legal systems and different police jurisdictions make it impossible for someone like Creasy to ban the marches.

However, the right to march could be taken to the UK Supreme Court.

Certainly, if the DUP-Tory deal is seen to cause Scotland particular grief – and it is already denying Scots any share of the bung that is heading to Belfast – then Holyrood could grow tired of a tradition which is so provocative and offensive to many Scots.

The SNP have been desperate to keep the Barnett formula despite Tory grumblings for reform.

This latest cash splurge may revive those calls for change.

Orange Lodge spokespeople like to say they are expressing an Ulster-Scots identity and it’s no different to any other community celebrating their history. This is clearly not true.

The SNP ditched attending Bannockburn marches, aware it made them look, well, like folk from Northern Ireland.

The DUP have made no similar move to modernise. Nor are the Orange marches innocent fun, like celebrating Guy Fawkes’s plot every November 5. The offence they cause is real and palpable.

Westminster do not have their troubles to seek but MPs across the divide are pretty sure they find the intolerance of Northern Irish politics abhorrent and backward. The DUP-Tory deal has given them cause to look again at the North. The DUP may come to regret the attention.

The Orange marches are not innocent fun. They cause real offence