PETER FOSTER AND I FIRST MET in a Belfast coffee shop. It was to play a minor role in Brexit history. Managing to combine Remainer sympathies with being the Daily Telegraph’s Europe editor, he kindly set out Theresa May’s three-point plan to get the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — of which I was director of policy — to support the first sea border inside the UK, the backstop.
First, Northern Irish business organisations were to bully the DUP and cut off their donations (that they were scarcely donors at all immediately sets the scene for how politically well-informed May’s team was). Second, our mouths would be filled with gold in return for the confidence and supply (C&S) terms with which the DUP helped sustain May’s minority government at Westminster.
But, I wearily explained, there were
