Yes, of course my hypothesis is that Alex's strategy is contingent on the Irish Question. But this is part of the huff and puff. My expectation is that once he has a Conservative-Leave majority, he doesn't need the DUP, and summarily ditches them, and finds the backstop a jolly good idea after all.

How well this flip-flop goes down with electors is immaterial, because he's five years out from the next election (and the list of horrors he will have done by then will be so long that the betrayal of the Unionists will be barely a footnote)

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}