D.U.P. Deals Blow to Brexit Plan as Boris Johnson Heads to Brussels – The New York Times, The New York Times

BRUSSELS – Britain’s frantic efforts to negotiate a Brexit agreement with the European Union hit a last-minute snag on Thursday morning, after Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party saidit could not support the deal “as things stand.”

The statement, hours before Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain was to present the deal to European leaders at a summit meeting in Brussels, suggested that British domestic politics once again threatened to torpedo a complex negotiation in the 11 th hour.

It was not clear whether the Northern Irish party simply wanted to make a show of holding out for its position before ultimately acquiescing – or whether Mr. Johnson faced a serious rebellion from the skeptics in his ranks.

But the sudden setback rattled the financial markets, with the British pound falling to $ 1. 27 and 1. 15 euros on the news, after surging earlier this week on optimism that a deal was finally in sight.

The Democratic Unionists, who have proved to be a pivotal blocking force in previous attempts to negotiate an agreement to extricate Britain from the bloc, said they were troubled by elements of the deal on how to handle Northern Ireland in a post-Brexit world.

“As things stand, we could not support what is being suggested on a customs and consent issues, and there is a lack of clarity on VAT,” the party said in a statement issued on Thursday, referring to the value-added tax.

The party said it would continu e working with the government on an acceptable agreement.

Johnson has consulted closely the Democratic Unionists and other skeptical elements of his Conservative Party-led coalition as a deal has taken shape. On Wednesday,optimism had grown amid signs in Brusselsthat the deadlock over Britain’s planned departure from the bloc could be on the verge of breaking.

Brussels has pushed Mr. Johnson so far that it “makes sense they are unhappy,” Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy, said of the Democratic Unionists. But he said it was unclear how serious the setback was, because “the D.U.P. does have to be seen fighting. ”

Room to maneuver is limited, however. The two sides could agree on some “optical tweaks” to mollify the skeptics, said a European officials not authorized to speak publicly, adding thatEuropean Union leaders would be “cautious to give more.”

The intervention from the Democratic Unionists underscores the problems that Mr. Johnson will inevitably confront in trying to get any deal through Parliament, where he does not have a majority. Without the support of the D.U.P., Mr. Johnson has little hope of getting any agreement ratified by Parliament.

It is also a reminder that he faces many of the problems confronted by his luckless predecessor, Theresa May, who suffered a similar setback. In December 2017, the Democratic Unionists derailed her efforts to reach a deal to allow her to proceed to another phase in the Brexit negotiations.

Under the proposed terms, there would be customs checks on goods flowing from Britain to Northern Ireland to ensure that they meet the rules if those goods were ultimately destined for the European Union.

There would be a complex series of rules on tariffs and value-added tax payments to compensate for differences in tariff rates between the European and British customs unions, though negotiators struggled late on Tuesday to resolve the issue of how to rebate value-added tax payments.

The arrangement would also be subject to consent by the Northern Ireland Assembly, but in a way that would prevent the Democratic Unionists, who have opposed previous such proposals, from simply vetoing it at the first possible opportunity.

The Democratic Unionists are crucial to Mr. Johnson’s effort to win a majority for the deal in Parliament. Their opposition to similar previous versions of a Brexit agreement forced Mrs. May to overhaul that agreement to place all of Britain in the European customs union for a period of time.

Mrs. May’s deal was, nevertheless, soundly defeated in Parliament three times.

Mr. Johnson was seen as having a better chance of cobbling together a majority, in part because he was a vocal supporter of Brexit before the 2016 referendum and thus has greater credibility with euroskeptic elements of the Conservative coalition.

The Democratic Unionist Party campaigned for Brexit in the 2016 referendum campaign, and Mr. Johnson has presented his plan as the last chance to deliver on that mandate from voters. In Northern Ireland as a whole, however, 56 percent of voters in the referendum favored remaining in the European Union.

Yet, for the party, which is strongly committed to maintaining Northern Ireland’s status as a part of the United Kingdom, the issues being negotiated by Mr. Johnson are existential. That is because if they bind Northern Ireland much more closely to Ireland, its southern neighbor, some fear that it would inevitably lead to a united Ireland.

If the Democratic Unionists have collectively decided that the proposals are unacceptable, they will have to change to secure support.

On Thursday, Mr. Johnson spoke by telephone with Mr. Juncker, Downing Street said, without giving further detail. Mr. Johnson’s hope is to win approval of the deal in Brussels by Friday and then put it to a vote in a special session of the House of Commons on Saturday.

The prime minister has vowed to withdraw Britain from the European Union, with or without a deal, by Oct. 31, and his negotiators have labored to seal an agreement by this week so that he is not forced to ask Brussels for an extension, as would be required under a measure that Parliament passed last

European negotiators have used that tight timetable as leverage to push Johnson on the issue of Northern Ireland. The deal taking shape is not all that different from the one that the European Union proposed to Mrs. May – and which she concluded she could not accept because of opposition from the Democratic Unionists.