Yahoo Finance DUP’s Foster challenges May with 'blood red lines' over new Brexit ‘backstop’
Theresa May is used to presenting the EU with her red lines for a Brexit deal, but now it’s the prime minister who is being challenged to meet tough conditions by her DUP partners.
DUP leader Arlene Foster has used a visit to Brussels to set out her own red lines that the prime minister must resect if she wants support for new UK government proposals on the Irish border ‘backstop’.
The new plan has not yet been formally tabled but details which emerged last week sparked a wave of optimism that a Brexit can be reached.
However, May has not yet shown the new proposal to Foster, whose party the prime minister depends upon for her Commons majority.
Foster is using her position as powerbroker in a bid to prevent any arrangement that would see checks on goods travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland, which she views as a threat to the constitutional integrity of the UK and the Northern Irish economy.
MORE: EU believes a Brexit deal is ‘very close’ with Irish border breakthrough
“We need to see what has been proposed and then we’ll check that against our red lines,” Foster told journalists at the European parliament.
“We need to be satisfied that we’re not going to do damage to the UK …
“…. We could not support any arrangement which could give rise to either customs or regulatory barriers within the UK internal market.”
Foster laid down her challenge to the prime minister just nine days before an agreement on the issue needs to be reached on the issue at the European Council summit.
It also came shortly after Foster met EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, who said he is “working hard to explain and de-dramatise the backstop.”
Continuing discussions with Northern Irish political leaders today: @DUPleader, @DianeDoddsMEP & @RobinSwannUUP, @JNicholsonMEP. Working hard to explain and de-dramatise the backstop #Brexit pic.twitter.com/JLW2oQNYzG
— Michel Barnier (@MichelBarnier) October 9, 2018
There are usually checks on goods coming into the EU’s customs territory from outside countries, but the bloc has agreed not to carry out such checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after Brexit in order to safeguard the peace process.
However, the EU says that means there must be some checks on goods coming into Northern Ireland in order to prevent those that do not meet EU standards from going across in the Republic of Ireland and then reaching the continent.
The ‘backstop’ solution under discussion will only come into operation if the EU and UK can’t conclude a free trade deal which maintains a frictionless trade in goods.
Barnier has amended the EU’s ‘backstop’ plan to try to minimise checks on goods coming into Nothern Ireland and make sure they take place away from the border.
But Foster refused to consider such a compromise on Tuesday, saying: “What we said to Barnier is checks of themselves are symptomatic of something different, so we only need checks if Northern Ireland is following a different regulatory regime to the rest of the UK.
“That’s why the backstop proposed by Barnier is unacceptable to us.”
MORE: Barnier vows to ‘improve’ EU Irish border plan in final push for Brexit deal
Foster has said that is part of her “blood red lines” over Brexit. Asked whether that implied her supporters are ready to “fight and die” for them, she replied: “What I meant by that is that they are deep red – they’re not pink.”
The UK government has responded to the DUP’s position by working on plans for an alternative backstop which would see the whole of the UK remain in the customs union – but that’s opposed by some of May’s own MPs.
Conservative MP Steve Baker said on Tuesday that at least 40 of his colleagues are ready to vote against a deal which included that solution because it would represent a “half in, half out Brexit.”
Foster stressed that she wants to reach a Brexit deal and she is staying in Brussels for the next two days in order to try and find a solution that would be acceptable to her.
Earlier in the day, she told BBC Radio Ulster that it is “eminently possible” to reach a Brexit deal that “works for everyone” with weeks.
The prime minister’s spokesperson said government officials are in “intensive” talks with EU negotiators in order to resolve the Irish border issue, which is the last major outstanding issue in the draft Withdrawal Agreement.
