Where do we go next with Brexit and Northern Ireland? Here are the nine key points to bear in mind

Why the Government won't fail, what Corbyn should do next and why the British public are changing their minds about Brexit

What now? (AFP/Getty)

Nine points to remember in relation to this new 2017 “Irish Question” in Brexit politics:

Minority governments can survive

It is absurd under any parliamentary system for 10 MPs to hold hostage 640 MPs. Theresa May needs the 10 Democratic Unionist Party members to give her an assured majority in the event of a crisis vote. They are not necessary for 99 per cent of government business and the DUP has already voted against May on one major parliamentary vote.

As an MP who lived through the end of the last Tory government without an effective majority before 1997, I know that Britain can live with minority governments.

The Government won’t fail

The chances of Theresa May’s Government falling on a vote of confidence are close to zero. Theresa May has 53 more Tory MPs than Labour MPs. Very few non-Labour MPs from any party see Jeremy Corbyn as a desirable or acceptable prime minister. The chances of non-Labour MPs following Corbyn into the lobby to bring down May – with or without the DUP – is not high.

The DUP isn’t the same as Northern Ireland

The DUP does not represent Northern Ireland, which voted strongly to remain in the EU. Plenty of Protestant businessmen and farmers saying the last thing they want is a return to customs checks and border posts, with uniformed officials of the British and Irish state again controlling flows of people and goods across the 270 roads and tracks that go north to south along the 500km border.

The idea that the DUP is fully representative is wrong, and over the next days this will become clearer. There are 10 DUP MPs, one independent Unionist and seven Sinn Fein MPs. The last of these, of course, refuse to sit in the House of Commons, but some means will be found for the non-DUP voters in Northern Ireland to make their voices heard.

Labour needs to be open about its values

At the weekend, a Labour spokesperson backed the idea of no hard frontier and said UK could remain in “a” customs union – as if saying “a”, rather than “the”, is much of a difference.

For the moment, Corbyn is not saying much on the idea that the future of Britain should be determined by 10 MPs from a party that is openly homophobic and believes women who have been raped and become pregnant should not be allowed an abortion, and 40 per cent of whose activists believe in Young Earth creationism – that God created earth 4,004 years before Jesus.

By any normal political standards in modern democracies, the DUP is at the far end of extreme nationalist identity and eccentric politics. Remember their MPs were ready to bring down the power-sharing Northern Island government rather than accept responsibility for disastrous mismanagement of a key economic policy.

Labour won’t jeopardise the Good Friday Agreement

The Good Friday Agreement was one of the proudest achievements of the last Labour government and welcomed by all MPs at the time. It is unlikely that Labour will endorse any policy that will damage the agreement – such as bringing back a hard border.

Unfortunately there is a US President who has no interest in America’s contribution to the agreement and no Northern Ireland politicians of the stature of Ian Paisley or John Hume who can speak up for it within the six counties.

But Labour’s two key leaders, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, have strong links to Ireland and apparent sympathy for Irish republicanism. Both Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein back the proposals that the DUP sought to veto. Labour is not going to support the extremist DUP and the more fanatical Tory Brexit MPs on this issue.

Remember how EU politics really works

EU Council President Donald Tusk said in Dublin on Friday that the EU27 stands in agreement and solidarity with the Irish government: “What Ireland wants is what the EU wants.” This statement is on the record. It cannot be unsaid.

There is no sense from recent talks in Paris that President Macron, now the key leader in Europe, is ready to make any concession to hardline right-wing anti-European obsessives in Northern Ireland. The idea that the EU can now make fresh new concessions to Theresa May to appease the DUP is not how European politics works.

Businesses need clarity – and soon

Business leaders have been briefing all autumn that December is the crunch moment when they need some clarity on whether the UK will maintain existing single market, customs union and ECJ rules for at least a transition period after March 2019. If there is no such assurance, then business federations, the City and individual banks have all said they will have to start planning to relocate, shed staff, change hiring firms and generally restrategise away from the UK.

The Transport Secretary and Brexiteer Chris Grayling now says the UK will accept the ultimate authority of the European Court of Justice to ensure that the UK stays part of the European Aviation Safety Agency, in order to ensure planes can fly after March 2019.

The Conservative Party has its own values to take care of

The Tory Party is the party of British business, not a handful of Ulster politicians obsessed with doing down Dublin. In the United States especially, despite Trump’s indifferences, the vast bulk of elected politicians and many state and city leaderships as well as businesses are emotionally and historically supportive of Ireland and Irish aspirations. The so-called “special relationship” is vital to the British establishment’s self-esteem and the UK still being important in the world.

Destroying the Good Friday Agreement, which was midwived by the US, would cause London immense damage in America.

British people are turning against the idea of Brexit

The mood on Brexit in the UK is changing. There is now a great deal of apprehension and uncertainty as Brexit is revealed as being unlikely to lead to the richer, stronger world trade champion that the anti-European politicians and press promised the nation in the years leading up to the vote on 23 June 2016.

Most opinion polls now show a majority – narrow, to be sure – in favour of stopping Brexit. An interesting Survation weekend poll showed 50 per cent of people favoured a new referendum to take place when the outline of a final deal is made known (with 34 per cent against).

One senior shadow cabinet member, Barry Gardiner, has called for a new referendum, as have other prominent political figures.

Theresa May and the 21st century generation of Conservative Party MPs and strategists cannot want Brexit to continue to overwhelm British politics for the years after 2019 going into the next general election. At some stage, a line has to be drawn. Facing down the bullying threats of the DUP would be a good place to start.

Denis MacShane is the former Europe minister and author of ‘Brexit No Exit: Why (in the end) Britain won’t leave Europe’ (IB Tauris)