ARLENE Foster has warned the Boris Johnson she wont back his Brexit deal unless he secures further concessions from Brussels.
The DUP leader told her party conference in Belfast, she would be demanding “honesty” from the prime minister after reflecting on his speech to the same event last year.
Then Boris promised the assembled Democratic Unionists he would not erect any new economic barriers in the Irish Sea.
She joked that the DUP had now put Johnson on the “naughty step” by voting against the government twice in the last week.
Slamming the regulatory and customs borders between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK in the deal, she claimed it would take Northern Ireland in the “wrong direction”.
Foster told delegates her party had the “boldness and strength to stand up and say no when we need to”.
She said: “On Brexit, we will not give support to the Government when we believe they are fundamentally wrong and acting in a way that is detrimental to Northern Ireland and taking us in the wrong direction.
“We will oppose them and we will use our votes to defeat them.
“Let me say clearly from this platform today that we want to support a deal that works for the whole of the United Kingdom and which does not leave Northern Ireland behind.
“But without change, we will not vote for the Prime Minister’s agreement.
“We worked intensively with the Government over recent weeks to try to reach a fair and balanced deal. We were not seeking a perfect deal.
“No such deal exists. We were seeking a deal which delivered Brexit without erecting barriers to trade.
The DUP leader also made clear her party could not live with the proposals for Stormont to give consent for extending the post-Brexit arrangements by way of a straight majority vote, rather than with the backing of a majority of unionists and a majority of nationalists.
The one-sided approval mechanism for the Assembly takes no account of powersharing,” she said.
“Indeed, it would lead to Sinn Fein, the SDLP and the Alliance Party ganging up to render unionist votes irrelevant. If you believe in the principles of powersharing then those principles must be enshrined in any deal.”
