THE DUP received the political equivalent of a punishment beating on Tuesday when Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris launched an extraordinary attack on the party over its continuing refusal to allow MLAs to do their jobs in the middle of an unprecedented economic crisis.

Speaking at an event at Queen’s University to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, Mr Heaton-Harris paid tribute to those who had taken risks for peace in 1998 and said: “Like David Trimble and David Ervine before in 1998, and Dr Paisley in 2006, real leadership is about knowing when to say yes and having the courage to do so.”

In diplomacy terms, it was a brutal condemnation of the DUP and the prevarication it is currently displaying, even with the report of the panel of eight completed and in the hands of the party leadership, which many had hoped was the party’s way of creating a pathway back to Stormont.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the knife was twisted when Mr Heaton-Harris name-checked Sinn Féin leaders. “Martin McGuinness, along with Gerry Adams, will be remembered for the courage and leadership they showed in persuading the republican movement for peace.”

The hard-hitting speech was a powerful illustration of the depth of frustration currently being felt in Downing Street, and with DUP representatives at the Queen’s GFA events this week made to feel extremely uncomfortable in the midst of a warm and strong pro-GFA consensus, the extent of the leading unionist party’s isolation has seldom been more starkly obvious.

Stranded, friendless and powerless in the face of a daunting coalition of the other parties, London, the EU and the United States, it should have been a time for reflection for party leader Jeffrey Donaldson. Instead, in time-honoured DUP  fashion, he lashed out bitterly and immediately, directing his impotent ire at both the UK Government and the United States. “The Secretary of State’s rhetoric was more akin to a speech by a clueless Irish American congressman rather than a UK government cabinet minister,” he said.

There is nothing clearer in politics at the moment than the Windsor Framework is as good as it gets for the DUP. The party has had seven weeks – a lifetime in the bewilderingly volatile political landscape in which we find ourselves – to have brought its base to an understanding that if they could never love the new arrangements, they are infinitely preferable to whatever comes next. For be in no doubt: there are no good outcomes for unionism even if they were in good odour with their putative political partners. 

It is only by going back into consociational government that they can end the damaging isolationism that may be proving popular just now with those in the bunker with them, but which is attracting growing opprobrium and wrath at home and across the water – east, south-east and west. And that makes the Protocol threat to the union pale.