DUP MPs will vote down Theresa May’s Brexit deal over the Northern Irish backstop, Arlene Foster has said, accusing the PM of failing to even ask Brussels to scrap the controversial clause.
Ahead of Parliament’s crunch vote on the prime minister’s Brexit proposal on Tuesday evening, the DUP leader said the party would defy its confidence-and-supply deal with the Conservative Party, which May relies on for a majority.
“We have to have a deal that does not break up the United Kingdom,” Foster said during a press conference with former Brexit secretaries Dominic Raab and David Davis, claiming that the current deal “separates Northern Ireland from Britain in a very real way”.
“There is no need for the backstop,” she continued, saying it was a “bit of nonsense” to talk about a hard border.
“To suggest that we will return to the borders of the past when the borders of the past were there for a completely different reason. They were there to stop terrorists, they were there to stop the flow of Semtex as opposed to the flow of powdered milk.”
Foster told the audience she had deja vu about coming to London to argue against the backstop, having done so ahead of the pulled meaningful vote in December.
“We said to the prime minister she had to get rid of the backstop and get a withdrawal agreement that can be lived with. I don’t think she even asked to get rid of the backstop,” the Northern Irish leader accused, saying the European Union had “held the pen” during negotiations.
“We should go to them with a better deal,” she added.
Meanwhile, former Brexit secretary Raab – who resigned in November – called on MPs to vote down the deal to give May a chance to go back to Brussels to negotiate, saying the UK should “keep the arm of friendship extended to our EU friends and partners”.
The UK has failed in its assessment of risk versus reward over leaving the EU, he continued. “One way or another we will end up with a deal of some sort with our EU partners – rational, economic self-interest suggests that’s the case.”
It was a sentiment echoed by Davis, who told the conference that the government “has been driven by largely irrational fears” about leaving the EU under World Trade Organisation rules.
No deal will not be “armageddon”, the Tory MP said, adding that any instability caused by no-deal “will not last long”.
But both men said that May should stay on as PM if she loses Tuesday night’s key vote, with Davis claiming she is “best-placed to renegotiate” with the EU.