Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shops, The Spectator's Political Podcast. I'm

Lara Prendergast and I'm today joined by Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth. So Fraser, the DUP

have accused May of breaking her promises on the Irish border. Are they about to cause more

problems for May, do you think? Well, they're certainly threatening to. The ironies that the letter

that Theresa May set them was supposed to be reassuring them, saying, oh, the EU want to split Northern Ireland and the UK, I'm not going to let it happen.

But they read into the small print of that, but that's exactly what she intended to do. Now, there are two very difficult questions about the deal Theresa May is about to get,

but she would rather not answer, not directly. One is, is the EU going to make any separate

demand of Northern Ireland than it is in the rest of the UK? In other words, is it going to

have a means of laying some kind of claim to Northern Ireland, and is she about to agree it?

And the second is how difficult it will be to get out of her

deal. Now, the DUP, you've got to hand it to them. They've got this, of course, you know, the

clues in the name, the unionists, they've got this laser-like focus in anything which might

weaken the Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. And the, I think Theresa May will have said,

it's funny that on the day she went into Downing Street, she was saying, I'm a very passionate

unionist. But I do think she's been on a bit of a learning curve as to what unionism means to

those who are genuinely passionate about it and how something that might not cause a

practical problem will be a deal breaker for the DUP and the other thing is how likely the

DUP are to vote against her. Now you might think well would the DUP cause that much trouble? Surely

they know about Jeremy Corbyn and the IRA. Surely they would not do anything to hasten Corbyn going

into number 10. But the thing

one has to remember about the DUP is if they are seen by the people who elect them to allow

any kind of dilution of the union, then they won't be elected again. So their jobs depend on

...