By Ben Kerrigan-
The DUP leader has stressed her party’s opposition to the Brexit deal, telling prime minister, Theresa May to “stop wasting time” and seek a better deal.
Foster who served as minister for enterprise and investment between 2008 and 2015, and minister of finance and personnel between 2015 and 2016 has a wealth experience in economic related matters. She is extremely opposed to the present arrangements. Ten of her Mps provide a needed boost to Theresa May’s government. They have all expressed disagreement with the draft Withdrawal Agreement.
She told the BBC’s Ulster Radio’s Inside Politics programme in Northern Ireland:
“As it currently stands, [the Withdrawal Agreement] is not going to get the support in parliament, I think that is very very clear, so instead of wasting time promoting a deal that is not actually going to get support, wouldn’t it be much better to use that time to get a better deal?” she asked. Who is going to put this hard boarder in place”?
It has now taken on an almost mythical status if you like and wouldn’t it be better to spend our time getting a deal not just for Northern Ireland but for the whole of the U.K,” she added.
The DUP would be “looking again” at its confidence and supply deal with the Conservatives if they don’t deliver on Brexit, Foster said. That agreement was about giving national stability and delivering on Brexit, she said. But we’re not there yet, and we’re not going to jump ahead until we see what happens in parliament. Foster proceeded to urge the government to “ditch the backstop.”
Ms Foster’s pro-British unionist party is concerned that the backstop provision could threaten the province’s place in the UK altogether. The DUP leader is strongly against the ‘backstop’, and confirmed the draft political declaration that followed on future relations had not changed the DUP’s opposition to the current deal.
Mrs May opted for the deal to avoid a scenario in which Britain does not get a better deal than the one currently on offer. However, Foster disagreed, saying the DUP did not accept that the current choice was a binary one between May’s deal and a ‘no deal’ where Britain would leave the bloc on March 29 without an agreement to mitigate economic and legal disruption.
Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, mr. Hammond, said the British government was examining ways of providing additional assurances to the DUP over the border backstop issue.Mr Hammond said the British government had a number of choices through the parliamentary process, including extending the implementation period, to avoid having to use the backstop.
He was. speaking during a visit to Rowendale Integrated Primary School in Moira, Co Down. It comes as Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned there would “very probably” be no summit to approve Britain’s exit from the European Union on Sunday, unless the issue of Gibraltar is resolved first.
Foster’s comments come as Madrid confirmed in Friday that it would veto post-Brexit relations between the EU and Gibraltar, if the draft Brexit deal if it does not get its way.
“If there’s no agreement” over Gibraltar, Sanchez said at a press conference in Cuba, “there very probably won’t be a European Council” summit