Panic?

Here’s a question. How does Newton Emerson know the following:

The DUP is now publicly panicking over Brexit.
Last week, as the British government’s plan for a customs partnership with Europe following Brexit fell apart and both houses of parliament voted to stay in the European Union customs union, the DUP reportedly informed Downing Street it would also back customs union membership if that was the price of preventing a so-called sea border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
DUP leader Arlene Foster repeated this in a television interview at the weekend. Her deputy Nigel Dodds, the party’s leader in the Commons, said much the same in a magazine interview two weeks ago.
Both stated they would prefer the UK to leave the customs union, with Dodds saying failure to do so would be “the worst of all worlds”.

Does this seem like panic? I’m not so sure. But even if it were true, does Emerson have some specific insight, bar what he (and we) can read in the news media about this issue?

Though I suppose it does suggest the DUP has no more a coherent line on all these matters than the Tories. Comforting words though for T May to an extent.

Emerson continues:

However, both added their only red line was keeping Northern Ireland in lockstep with Britain, whatever Brexit’s outcome.
If this achieves nothing else it should debunk claims the DUP is seeking a hard Brexit for hardline unionist reasons.
According to this hypothesis, which enjoys some credence in republican circles, the DUP or leading elements within it see Brexit as a last chance to drive an economic and physical wedge along the Border before the inexorable forces of demography, reason and love unite us all in a 32-county paradise.

And he continues:

The past two weeks have made it clear the DUP is not hoping to sabotage Irish unity through Brexit. However, this is not as accepted as it ought to be, even as the party runs scared of a sea border. Conspiracy theories attract diehard fans, this one flatters traditional suspicions about unionists and the British government, and investigations into Brexit campaign funding keep adding fuel to the paranoid fire.

Am I missing a sentence there where he demonstrates that this is not the case? Simply because Foster recognises that British political dynamics may be moving against her previously stated position on the customs union doesn’t mean that she and others don’t hope Brexit ’sabotages’ Irish unity. All it indicates is a recognition of that dynamic and that it would sweep them aside if push came to shove. Though given how absurd all these machinations are given the reality of what is on offer to the UK in relation to Brexit one has to wonder whether any of this has any reality at all.

I really think Emerson is reaching in the next paragraph too:

The result could be the worst of all worlds for Northern Ireland politics, in which the DUP backs a soft Brexit and perhaps even plays a small part in delivering it, but where it never gets the credit because of its pride and nationalism’s mistrust. A chance for rapprochement will be squandered and Brexit will remain hugely divisive despite being technically resolved.

Well, let’s wait and see if the DUP does back a soft Brexit. But it hasn’t yet.

That said, credit where credit is due. I do think Emerson is correct in the following:

There are two keys to understanding the DUP’s true position on EU departure. The first is to realise that, like almost everyone else, it did not think Leave would win the 2016 referendum. This lured the party into believing it could indulge the pro-Brexit instincts of its members and supporters at no political cost.
Such instincts were not shared across the leadership. In an infamous interview just after the referendum, Stormont economy minister Simon Hamilton – Foster’s closest lieutenant – repeatedly refused to say how he had voted, leading to the universal assumption he had voted Remain.

He argues that it was the Westminster caucus that was most pro-Brexit and was given its head consequently. And this seems likely too:

In the 2017 Westminster election, incredibly, it won 10 seats and found itself holding the balance of power, acquiring a national responsibility for Brexit. Now it is facing the fact that even this level of influence cannot offset the centrifugal forces unleashed against the union.
Did the DUP bring this on itself? Certainly. But that cannot have been its intention. Like the big beasts of Brexit it thought it could play with, the DUP has never had a plan.

The thing is though, that the DUP did have options after the referendum. It has pursued a ‘hard’ Brexit over a soft one. It has championed the ‘magical thinking’ on the Border that Davis et al have sought. It has allied itself with the most reactionary elements in Toryism, quite an achievement given how reactionary those elements are. It has been very clear in that, even to this day, even in the quotes Emerson himself provides. I think he’s right that in some ways it isn’t as wedded to matters as it might like to make out, and in any event may become an irrelevancy. But by its tactless and graceless approach it has, unquestionably, soured matters still further. That, unfortunately, is no small thing.