Editorial: Rishi Sunak should think hard before signing off Northern Ireland deal with the EU

The DUP grandee Lord Dodds last night said that he had never seen the party as united as it was now, ahead of an imminent NI Protocol deal.It is encouraging to hear that. Unionism has seemed confused and torn and even defeatist at times in recent years. The constant badgering of the unionist position, the eye rolling insistence that they must agree to yet another major concession to nationalism or have worse imposed on them from London has taken its toll.

But the almost reflex acceptance that there must always be talks and must always be a new agreements that are halfway between unionist and nationalist demands in fact has amounted to an acceptance that this is ‘process’ that must move ever closer to an all Ireland.

With the disaster of the Irish Sea border this unionist defeatism may be coming to an end. All mainstream unionists oppose this trade barrier, the scale of which has been confirmed by the Supreme Court.

The Ulster Unionists can point with justification to the grave DUP blunder of accepting the first iteration of Boris Johnson’s protocol in 2019, the DUP can point with justification to the UUP’s latterly muddled, weak way of opposing the protocol.

What now needs to happen is the sort of joint approach to such a fundamental problem as was shown in the legal action.

Rishi Sunak has flown into Belfast. It is clear that he is near to approving a deal.

Perhaps its content will be better than unionists expect it to be. But if not Downing Street needs to remember that the UK has many determined internal foes who believe its end is within reach. At points in the last two years London has shown that does not accept this narrative. It should not now sign a deal that allows lasting damage to the Union, and which the EU is within days, and then forever, repeating:

‘You Agreed This’.