Here's why the Northern Ireland backstop is so crucial – and why Brexit hardliners are sabotaging democracy

By riding roughshod over the wishes of people in the province, May and Foster have done more to make the case for a united Ireland than Sinn Fein ever could

Despite being the circle that could never be squared, Northern Ireland remains the least understood aspect of the Brexit psychodrama.

Anyone tuning into the BBC’s Today programme on Saturday in the hope of enlightenment, will have been sorely disappointed. Listeners to John Humphry’s belligerent interview with Irish minister, Helen McEntee, would be forgiven for thinking that Brexit was Ireland’s idea.

When Humphry’s asked why the Republic doesn’t abandon the EU and “throw in their lot” with the UK, it was apparent that his knowledge of Anglo-Irish history was even more rudimentary than that of Priti Patel and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley.

Given the increasingly inflammatory and misleading commentary surrounding the backstop, it may come as a shock to some on mainland Britain to hear that the Irish government is an autonomous state with its own sovereign parliament. Ireland, as an EU member, has prospered, culturally and economically. Unsurprisingly, 92 per cent of the population want to remain in the EU. That number is said to have risen having witnessed the UK’s descent into a wholly avoidable, Brexit-induced breakdown.

Being Irish, I have family and friends on both sides of the border (protestant and catholic). Unlike “the troubles” of the past, nationalists and unionist alike are united in their opposition to a hard border. They accept that the backstop is the only workable way of achieving that and have overwhelmingly endorsed it.

This, despite being the majority view (Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU), is not being represented by the DUP and the media, which makes a mockery of Theresa May’s chicanery; that her Brexit red lines somehow uphold “democracy” and “the will of the people”.

Nowhere do those words ring more hollow than in Northern Ireland, where the absence of a functioning assembly has left the catholic community completely disenfranchised from the Brexit debate. As my cousin said: “with no assembly, we have no voice. Our vote is meaningless. How is that democratic”?

In March, Conservative MP and chair of Westminster’s Northern Ireland committee, Andrew Murrison, warned Theresa May that the lack of a functioning executive was a “democratic deficit”, depriving the region of the opportunity to raise Brexit concerns.

"But", protests a unionist friend, "The DUP doesn’t even speak for us". A point she made during the mock border patrol demonstration in Newry on Saturday. She went to show the world that communities across sectarian and national divides in the region, are united in their opposition to a hard border.

“My parents are farmers and lifelong DUP supporters but they think Arlene Foster has lost the plot”. The local CBI office and traditional DUP stalwarts the farmers union, have joined citizens in warning of the calamitous implications of a hard border. Last week’s bomb in Derry was a reminder of the fragility of peace within border communities.

Still the DUP, like the Tories, seem bent on inflicting as much damage as possible in their apparently unstoppable quest to commit national hara-kiri. A sentiment my friend poignantly captured:

“I don’t say this lightly because I work in mental health, but it feels like the lunatics are running the asylum”. When people inflict harm on themselves and others, and display delusional and suicidal tendencies, they are removed to a safe place to undergo treatment. When our government inflicts harm on us, we’re supposed to pretend it’s normal. It’s not.

The backstop is designed to safeguard the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), a legally binding international peace treaty voted for by people across the Island of Ireland in a referendum, 20 years ago. The details of the GFA were meticulously circulated to every household beforehand so that people knew what they were voting for.

Today, the DUP (which voted against the GFA) seems likely to join fellow Brextremists in Westminster in jeopardising the result of that 1998 referendum, which underpins peace and stability in the region, in order to impose their back-of-a-fag-packet Brexit. They will invoke "democracy" and, in doing so, debase it.

Recent polls indicate that 60 per cent of people in Northern Ireland would prefer to be part of a united Ireland than a disunited little Britain. Ironically, by riding roughshod over the democratic rights of the people in the province, the DUP/Tory coalition of chaos, has done more to make the case for a united Ireland than Sinn Fein ever could.

It is incumbent on the British and Irish governments, as co-guarantors of the peace, to ensure regulatory alignment and open borders in Northern Ireland. The Irish government is right to hold Theresa May to that shared duty. As my father said after voting for the Good Friday Agreement, “Is tsíocháin bhuaigh crua agus go héasca a cailleadh” (Peace is hard won and easily lost).