The real choice for mps is to support the union or the withdrawal agreement | thearticle

Commentators continue to scold Brexiteers and the DUP for refusing to support Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement in order to secure Brexit. If they had compromised just a little, we’re told,

the UK would by now have left the European Union. Influential members of the ERG, including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson, eventually accepted this logic in the third meaningful vote,

after Theresa May promised to stand down if her deal passed. Decisively, the DUP maintained its opposition to the backstop. Its leader, Arlene Foster, confirmed “the most important issue …

for our 10 MPs, is the preservation of the Union.” The Northern Irish party can be criticised justifiably for its strategic oversights during the negotiations. It pushed for a harder Brexit,

when a softer arrangement might have avoided turning the land border in Ireland into such an intractable issue, and it approved a redraft of articles 49 and 50 of December 2017’s ‘Joint

Report’, which formalised the UK’s agreement to a legal ‘backstop’, to the barely concealed glee of Dublin and Brussels. Some doubts have been voiced too about the party’s commitment to

UK-wide unionism, as opposed to an Ulster variant that is focussed on cultural trappings and maximising public spending in the province. Over the past week, though, the DUP has articulated

two points that are unimpeachable from a unionist perspective. Firstly, getting rid of Theresa May is not worth it if it means accepting a deal that could potentially break-up the UK. It’s

tempting for Conservatives who think that her leadership has been disastrous, but it addresses none of the problems with the backstop. Secondly, it would be better to accept a softer Brexit

or remain in the EU, rather than do serious damage to our own Union, by enacting the Withdrawal Agreement. A number of flimsy arguments have been used to make the backstop issue go away,

from people who also class themselves as unionist. The prime minister is, after all, always banging on in classic Maybot style about “our precious union”. The protocol was depicted by the

government initially as a UK-wide set-up, that was supposed to be a significant concession by the EU. That assertion was dispelled quickly, as it became clear that Northern Ireland would be

locked indefinitely in the customs union and key parts of the single market, while Great Britain would form part of a common ‘customs territory’, with a right to leave. Some commentators

claim that the province already has something like a ‘special status’, because some of its laws differ from those on the mainland. That contention misses the distinction between devolved

issues and the building blocks of the constitution. In any case, the idea that, because there are differences between parts of the UK, you can create more, much more serious differences

without ill effects, makes no logical sense. It’s simply not possible to explain or wish away the seriousness of the backstop, if you are concerned with maintaining a strong United Kingdom.

This is not an unimportant abstraction buried in the detail of the draft text; it strikes at the heart of the UK’s survival as a unitary nation state. The historian and Ulster Unionist

politician, Jeffrey Dudgeon, has pointed out that the Northern Ireland protocol would require the 1800 Act of Union to be “repealed or changed so drastically it will be unrecognisable”. This

is a statute of “unique importance” that underpins the existence of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and contains a fundamental commitment that in all treaties,

“made by his Majesty his heirs and successors, with any foreign power, his Majesty’s subjects of Ireland shall have the same privileges and be on the same footing as his Majesty’s subjects

of Great Britain.” Dudgeon observes that the act contains “the only economic article in the foundation statute of the UK state”, establishing that, “the subjects of Great Britain and Ireland

shall be on the same footing in respect of trade and navigation”. He warns that, “casual inattention, an indifference to history and constitutional norms already threaten the unity of the

UK in a way that no Irish government would ever countenance.” His point is supported by the well-connected Politico journalist, Tom McTague, whose recent in-depth account of the negotiations

suggested that Dublin was flabbergasted when Britain signed up to the backstop. He quoted a senior EU27 official who said, “we just could not believe the British had accepted the text. We

knew it would not be acceptable to the unionists. The truth is, Brexit was always going to poison the atmosphere and it has.” Extraordinarily, despite the fact that her deal has been voted

down three times, Theresa May insists that the Withdrawal Agreement, which includes the backstop, cannot be changed and she hopes to win over new supporters with promises to tinker with the

unenforceable political declaration. A temporary customs union with the EU will not solve the backstop problem either, as it still involves accepting a protocol that potentially traps

Northern Ireland in a separate jurisdiction indefinitely. You can frame and reframe the question as many times as you like but it still amounts to the same thing. The backstop asks MPs to

sacrifice the Northern Ireland part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in order to secure a Brexit deal. Mrs. May has accepted this principle, making it the one red

line that she’s seemingly not prepared to cross, and Rees-Mogg and Johnson endorsed the position last week in the House of Commons. It’s still the worst outcome of all for anybody who takes

their unionism seriously.