Owen Polley: The DUP leader Gavin Robinson is vowing to remove an Irish Sea border that his predecessor Jeffrey Donaldson said was gone

The new leader of the DUP, though, was Donaldson’s deputy when the deal was agreed in January. Alongside Emma Little-Pengelly, who subsequently became first minister, he was believed to be central to negotiations with the government.While Mr. Robinson was reluctant to admit that his personal message on Safeguarding the Union had changed, the new approach must be interpreted as a u-turn.

Previously, the party claimed that the deal effectively removed the sea border. Now it acknowledges that this frontier still exists. Previously, it said it ended an ‘automatic pipeline of EU law’ to Northern Ireland, but now it is talking again about fighting against Brussels’ rules.

Whether he admits it frankly or not, Mr Robinson previously defended Donaldson’s view of the deal, while acknowledging it was not perfect. On Nolan, he described Safeguarding the Union in much less categorical terms, as merely a ‘work in progress’ that sets out a ‘direction of travel’.

This belated admission that the DUP did not, in fact, remove the Irish Sea border is welcome. To use Mr Robinson’s phrase, it injects ‘ cautious realism’ into the debate about Northern Ireland’s position in the UK. But his party should be realistic too about how its change in direction will be viewed.

Firstly, it was announced after the general election was called, and many unionists will view it as a tactic intended to avoid losing votes to the TUV / Reform. The DUP is trying to win back the status of an anti-protocol, anti-framework party, having decided that pretending that these things had been dealt with was simply no longer tenable.

Secondly, if the deal really is a ‘direction of travel’ and a ‘work in progress’, then the government’s decision to call an election before many of its key features were delivered, leaves unionists and the DUP with enormous problems.

At a House of Lords’ committee last week, the foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, admitted that the EU continues to demand that more checks are conducted under the Windsor Framework, which it claims has not been properly implemented. The government, meanwhile, conveniently stopped releasing figures on this aspect of the Irish Sea border, when it took control of its implementation, under the terms of Safeguarding the Union.

Mr. Robinson did not seem last week to withdraw his party’s claim that the deal would mean checks and paperwork become unnecessary for the ‘internal market’ system that brings British goods to Northern Ireland’s domestic market.Given that the Conservative government will soon no longer be in place, when can we expect these promises to be fulfilled? And, how, indeed, will we ever know that the pledge has been delivered, if the workings of the Irish Sea border are shrouded in secrecy?

In something of a ‘humblebrag’, Mr Robinson effectively told Nolan last week that sometimes his mastery of detail prevents him from providing simple answers. He spoke about Brussels’ laws at length, delivering a bit of a lecture on ‘dynamic alignment’, which he claimed his party had ended by giving Stormont powers to block some EU legislation.Unfortunately, though, the High Court recently ruled that human rights laws in Northern Ireland, for example, would automatically follow new EU law.

In his speech last week, Mr Robinson also said his party would, “fight to… (remove) the application of EU law in our country.” When Mr Nolan pressed the DUP leader on how he would follow through on that promise, he was evasive, but more or less acknowledged that it was a policy position, rather than something that could necessarily be achieved.It is certainly remarkable that, so soon after Sir Jeffrey Donaldson claimed Safeguarding the Union, “takes away the border within the UK”, his successor was back to vowing to remove that frontier. The DUP is edging towards honesty about its deal, but there’s still a suspicion that complete candour is lacking.

In a trio of News Letter columns last week, for example, its former policy chief, Dan Boucher, implied that the party chose to support ‘privileged access to the Republic of Ireland’ market, despite being aware that made seamless trade with Great Britain more difficult.

In addition, critics have suggested that the unspoken intention behind Safeguarding the Union was to get the government to manage unpopular aspects of the Irish Sea border, so that the DUP could claim it was not implementing the protocol when it went back to Stormont.The party clearly thought it had to sell its deal hard to unionists initially, to persuade them that the restoration of devolution was justified. For a general election campaign, though, its leader realised that overselling Safeguarding the Union was increasingly damaging the DUP’s credibility.

It will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out at the election. Far more important, though, is whether the claims made of Safeguarding the Union can really be delivered eventually, or whether they were just empty promises rather than a ‘direction of travel’.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​