There is the story of Sam the stockbroker, who made so much money that he was able to buy himself a 100 foot yacht and have it moored in New York Harbour.

He then invited his parents to dinner on board the yacht and dressed specially in a captain’s uniform that he bought to go with the boat.

After dinner he said to his parents, “Well, I bet you never thought you would see this: your own son the captain of such a vessel.”

His mother smiled at him. “Son”, she said, “to me you are a captain. To your father you are a captain. But to a real captain, you’re not a captain.”

Junior

That story came back to me recently listening to Ian Paisley Junior ranting off again about Brexit, and what the British Government should do to put “Brussels” in their place. Junior, never the sharpest of spoons in the knife drawer, hasn’t realised yet that to his voters he and his may be British. To some of his political opponents in Ireland they may even be British. But to the real British, the ultras who are busily trying to craft their little Engländer Brexit, they are not British.

That will matter when the crunch-time comes between the British government and the EU. When it comes to the choice between a deal that will satisfy those, like Jacob Rees-Mogg, seeking Brexit to avoid EU tax regulations for themselves and their clients, those, like Micheal Gove, using Brexit as an executive power grab, and those, like Theresa May, slavering over the anti-migrant ethnic cleansing that they dream of after Brexit, the interests of embarrassing “Irish” types like the DUP are not going to count for much. Instead they will be ignominiously dumped just as every British vassal has been as soon as it becomes convenient or necessary to advance the interests of the “real” British.

The outcome of the negotiations between the EU and the UK over the Irish border is already settled. It was settled in December 2017 when the UK agreed in effect that the north of Ireland would remain, de facto, in the Single Market and Customs Union. Hence the border will be in the Irish Sea. This, the “back-stop option”, is something that the DUP will regard as the most abject and treasonous of betrayals. It does have a certain ironic, comic value however: it is the inevitable outcome of the DUP’s successful, if dubiously ethical, campaigning for the UK to leave the EU.

The current pantomime that the UK is indulging, repeatedly proposing to EU 27 the same fantastically unworkable ideas for dealing with the border, is not a serious negotiating effort. There is no expectation on the part of the British that these proposals will provide any basis for a mutually agreed solution let alone that they may be accepted unamended. Their purpose is merely as a subterfuge to attempt to delude the DUP into believing that the British government is still fighting their corner so that continued DUP support for the UK government will be maintained. Of course eventually denial of the intended “betrayal” becomes impossible and the Tories will have to either come clean or accept the economic devastation that a no-deal Brexit would bring.

The loyalty to the British Crown of the Unionist community in the North of Ireland is an incredible thing. Tens of thousands have displayed awesome courage in its service and bled for it over the centuries in every war and imperial adventure that the British have undertaken. But this loyalty has never been reciprocated by the British Establishment. The DUP are about to find that out as they are abandoned like the cheap stooges to power that they are.