Page 5 - I Protocol News Today

After a night of political drama, veiled locations and the bizarre spectacle of the DUP’s private meeting being live-tweeted to the public, the dust has settled and the deal is done.

While in substance the paper ‘No Deal Is Better Than A Bad Deal’ is nothing we haven’t heard before, its timing in the long-running Northern Ireland Protocol saga is telling.

The DUP is alive with speculation and suspicion about what Sir Jeffrey Donaldson plans to do at tonight’s party executive meeting.

Hardline DUP elements have vowed to turn tomorrow night’s meeting of the party executive into a “bloodbath” as Sir Jeffrey Donaldson pushes ahead with plans to restore the Assembly.

A paper co-authored by Baroness Kate Hoey, Ben Habib, Jim Allister KC MLA and Jamie Bryson titled ‘No deal is better than a bad deal’ will be published ahead of a crunch meeting of the DUP to decide on a return to Stormont.

An Orange lodge, which includes two former DUP politicians as members, has told Sir Jeffrey Donaldson he must not lead the party back to Stormont until all its seven tests are fully met.

A fortnight before Christmas, a senior unionist rang about the DUP’s talks with the Government. At the end of the conversation, the individual said of the proposed deal on the Irish Sea border: “I do think if this goes through that it’s the end.”

The bromance is officially over. The relationship between Sir Jeffrey Donaldson and Jamie Bryson, which blossomed in those heady days of anti-protocol protests, has come to a swift but unsurprising end.

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s passionate speech in Parliament this week showed a very different side to the DUP leader.

Jim Allister has warned that the Prime Minister’s reported offer to sacrifice some of Britain’s freedoms in a bid to appease the DUP and restore power-sharing “would make a nonsense of Brexit”.