This is the BBC.

The surest sign that a deal seems to be close,

or at least people who don't like the sound of that Brexit deal,

think it's close, is that the rhetoric becomes more blood-curdling,

the warnings more stark, the nerves, more obvious.

And so it was this week when David Davis wrote to all Tory MPs

to warn them of the dire electoral consequences

of pushing on with the Prime Minister's checkers plan.

An international development secretary, Penny Mordens,

found herself asked the same question again and again and again.

I think that we need to let the Prime Minister and her negotiating team

get on with it, and I'm supporting her in doing that.

Well, the Prime Minister can count on my support,

but what I would say is that we don't know where this is going to end up.

As the old saying goes with friends like that,

who needs the DUP as the people propping you up in government,

this week Arlene Foster, their leader, was in Brussels,

but the message she had, at least in public, was for the Tories at home.

Don't take our support for granted.

I am a unionist. I believe in the union of the United Kingdom.

But what happens in five years, in ten years, in twenty years?

We do not want Northern Ireland going off in a different direction

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