Sputnik: Andrea Leadsom told BBC Radio 5 Live: ‘I am working towards getting a deal that does not require the UK to be stuck, trapped in a customs arrangement… Is this possible?
Keith Rowe: Well they may still have this ideal of wanting to do that but everything the Conservative government has done in practice, has actually worked against that and I doubt very much that they are capable of negotiating it. They need to go back to the drawing board or let someone else do it for them.
Sputnik: Essentially will Theresa May's successfully make it through the commons?
Keith Rowe: Well she's done the seemingly impossible… she's united both the brexitiers and the remoaners. Everybody seems to not like her deal — there's something in it that everyone dislikes. I'm not a great expert in the parliamentary maths but by the looks of the comments I'm hearing from MPs on different sides of the argument, I would think that there's a strong possibility it won't get through the commons. The DUP seem strongly against it, many of the Conservatives are against it; I mean the real thing we don't know is what the Labour party will do because one minute they say one thing and then someone else senior in the party will say the opposite, so assuming the people who have stood up to said they will vote against it and do vote against it will make it very difficult to get through the commons.
Sputnik: In recent weeks we've seen the true power that the DUP hold in the Brexit negotiations. What effect do they have on Britain's future post Brexit?
Keith Rowe: The DUP are only really holding the Conservative party to what the Conservative party said they would be doing in their manifesto when they were elected. In a way, they're just carrying out the wishes of the people who voted by a majority to leave the EU and keep the UK whole. Everybody says they don't want to separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom or to have a border in the sea or any of these options and the DUP have been very clear on these promises from the start. They hold the balance of power due to a big mistake by Theresa May when she held the snap general election but they seem to be the safeguards of carrying out the democratic will of the people.
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