Backstop? No backstop? As May woos supporters, old rivals agree: all the options are doomed

In Belfast the only consensus on Brexit is a huge, collective groan

In Belfast the only consensus on Brexit is a huge, collective groan

Theresa May visited Northern Ireland this week to pitch a deal that will “command broad support”. But on the streets of Belfast the only consensus about Brexit was a collective groan.

Those who want a hard Brexit or no Brexit or just never want to hear the word again expressed little confidence on Tuesday that the prime minister’s two-day trip to Belfast will muster support.

She had come before Christmas selling a deal with a backstop. Now she was selling one without a backstop, or a limited backstop, and many people here saw little difference: all options seemed doomed.

“I think Theresa May should resign, not come here,” said John Lynch, 64, a retired economic historian, tramping up the Glen Road in west Belfast. “She reached a deal and can’t get it through parliament. It’s a shambles. They’ve turned the whole thing into a complete circus.”

Damian Bradley, 50, a Falls Road barber who includes Gerry Adams among his clients, said he was bracing for trouble. “If there’s a hard Brexit it’ll hit this place the worst,” he said. “We don’t need to be closing borders and cutting ourselves off from people.”

A recent New IRA car bomb in Derry and a UVF killing in Belfast have provided graphic reminders that paramilitaries remain active in Northern Ireland.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Lynch: ‘I think Theresa May should resign, not come here’ Photograph: Paul McErlane/The Guardian

“People forget how quickly things can degenerate economically, and that could give people an excuse to bring us backwards,” said Bradley. “I grew up when they were burning buses and things were getting wrecked.”

The barber had sympathy for the prime minister. “She’s been sold a pup and had to run with it. She’s tried very hard to get a deal. She’s doing her best.”

Brenda Robb, 61, a store worker, also felt pity. “She’s got it all on her shoulders. I don’t think she’s the worst. I don’t envy her.”

That was the closest thing to an endorsement of the prime minister. May faced tough audiences in Belfast, where relentless rain matched a grim, anxious mood. It is a toss-up who is unhappier: the 56% of voters here who voted to stay in the European Union or the 44% who voted to leave.

On Tuesday, by the banks of the river Lagan, May addressed business leaders who grumbled that they had incurred Democratic Unionist party wrath by batting for her deal-with-backstop, only for her to drop it. She winced when a journalist questioned her credibility, following suggestions that she had “betrayed” and “shafted” the business community.

On Wednesday the Conservative leader was due for a grilling from Sinn Fein and DUP leaders who accuse her of abandoning the backstop, or not abandoning it enough.

Resolving that conundrum will require political alchemy. But few in Belfast, nationalist or unionist, remainer or leaver, credited May with the ability even to boil an egg.

“If she walked in here now I’d tell her where the door is and to keep walking until she finds a cliff,” said an anti-Brexit butcher on the Lisburn road.

Mark Brown, 45, the owner of Arcadia, a deli in a leafy corner of south Belfast, expressed fatalism. “People are fearful. It’s above our heads. What can we do about it? We’re just waiting. There’s no point worrying about something you can’t control.”

A hard Brexit could disrupt his imports of cheese, salami and paté, he said. “The only good thing is we’ll all be in the same boat – we’ll all have to raise prices.” Brown’s preferred outcome is to turn back the clock. “Let’s go back to the way it was.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mark Brown: ‘People are fearful. It’s above our heads.’ Photograph: Paul McErlane/The Guardian

Some shoppers in a unionist neighbourhood in the Lisburn road confided Brexit remorse. “I have regrets that there was not more truthful information about it,” said a retired university administrator, who withheld her name.

Pastry worker Kirsty Stewart, 23, was regretful up to a point. “It was a good thing at the start, but it doesn’t look good now,” she said. “There are too many things coming up that we didn’t know at the start.”

She was, however, sceptical of the prime minister’s efforts to strike a deal. “I’d still vote to leave,” she added. “No deal is better than this deal.”

Across town in a republican part of Belfast there was a surprising level of agreement with her view.

Joe Kennedy, 75, a retired taxi driver, said he had joined DUP supporters in voting for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.

But Kennedy had a different motive. “I want a united Ireland. I knew it would be mayhem. This seems a way to break up the union – Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales.” He scorned May’s visit. “She’s letting the DUP control her strings. She’s a puppet.”

Still, here was an Irish nationalist making common cause with unionist Brexiters, a flash of bipartisanship for a prime minister seeking broad support.