I don't agree with the DUP's objections to the deal. But they have earned the right to be heard

I am a bit of a Pink Floyd fan. Not so much of the early stuff. The other day I looked at those early gigs, the ones recorded at the Marquee club where you’d be lucky if you could see through the fag smoke and spot Nick Mason playing the drums. My overall impression was confirmed: what I was watching was a series of (seemingly) interminable guitar solos, starting from a low note and ending at a high one, the point of which was to announce a set of ill-defined grievances about the horrors of the world. No lyrical content. No argument. Just noise intended to make us all feel bad.

For some unaccountable reason I was reminded of this during the Commons farce on Saturday when Ian Blackford struggled to his feet. And I was even more reminded of it when, several days later, he sat down again.

“The Floyd” once wrote a dirge called Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. There were moments on Saturday when I was tempted to do just that.

Mr Blackford spent some considerable time generating a context of grievance from which the patron saint of rational discourse was always likely to absent themselves. It was the perfect speech for what has happened: insist that Parliament is recalled in order to stamp on the neck of the UK polity while feeling really good about it.

The normal constitutional order of things is this: when a Treaty is brought before Parliament what happens is the Commons indicates its approval or otherwise. At that point, if consent is granted, the legislative-scrutiny bit kicks in. Sir Oliver Letwin – the guy who let two burglars into his house to use his bathroom, but who now presumes to adulterate the course of history according to his own self-bestowed historical acuity – has managed to reverse that normal way of things. Letwinism goes something like this: when being invited to pass an aesthetic judgment on the Mona Lisa, it is essential to examine the flecks of paint pixel-by-pixel, and then make a decision of what the painting actually represents.

There is much wrong with Mr Johnson’s Treaty, but he deserves better than the cascade of uncertainty initiated by Letwin. Mrs May’s “deal” would not have left us as a “vassal state” but as a piece of rock hurtling in the direction of a black hole. Readmission will be inevitable if we acquiesce in a technical exit in conjunction with a willingness to remain within the EU orbit. The PM has at least offered the possibility of an escape velocity.

But the DUP, unlike Letwin et al, objects to his proposals on the basis of a reasonable and historically well-grounded fear of betrayal. While Theresa May was merrily running through fields of wheat, Arlene Foster, Nigel Dodds and the other members of the DUP were having a certain steel poured into their souls. They were touched every day by the brutishness of military Republicanism. Their fathers and brothers, their daughters, their postmen and milkmen were being systematically removed from their community circles by a ruthless machine of murder, the purpose of which was one of ethnic cleansing.

They also will have grieved for their fellow sufferers in the Catholic community. Humanity binds itself to humanity. The DUP has seen these things up close. Dominic Grieve, Letwin, and Bercow are the Last of the Summer Wine representation: perfectly prepared to construct bizarre Heath Robinson legislation in order to drive the bathtub-on-wheels down the nearest available hill. Just to see what happens.

The DUP’s objections to Mr Johnson’s deal need to be listened to even more loudly than those of the rest of us. Not because the objections are more valid, but because the airing of them is more earned. They, and the people they represent, deserve better than the tawdry dismissals that have become the default position of the commentariat.

But it’s important not to let principle be neutralised by detail. I would suggest that to look at the intricacies of the Johnson Treaty and seek out excuses for inflexibility is to make an error. It might well be that a “border” in the Irish sea is obnoxious: but technology overtakes the life of every individual on earth and what a “border” means now is likely not what it will mean in 10 years’ time. Similarly: don’t reject the proposed mechanisms of consent based on a worry about what consent might look like in four years’ time.

But these are mere suggestions from someone who left Belfast some years ago.

On Saturday, behind the pretence of legislative scrutiny, the Remain establishment initiated a Pink Floyd sabotage. In place of argument was offered noise. Instead of melody they insisted on dirge. The strategy was this: put on display the way I feel about what is happening because I am, after all, too immature to defend it in proper terms. We don’t need analysis. We need “angry face”.

But it’s actually only the DUP who have a right to be angry. I don’t agree with their objections to Mr Johnson’s deal. But I have every sympathy when I hear their wrath.

The anger of the DUP is understandable, and is an expression that their worst fears might be realised. The anger of the Remainers is confected and is a device to make sure that their hopes come true.