Quick straw poll: who else had forgotten the DUP have been keeping the Tories in power? I certainly had. They’ve been so quiet. I’ve heard so little from them since the election, they’d entirely slipped my mind. Until today, when they made it clear they haven’t forgotten.

Which is particularly suspicious when you consider what a bunch of unreasonable, angry ball-bags they are. Have they been holding out for just this set of circumstances? Maybe. It would be an easy power-multiplier for them, leveraging their position well beyond that which they could otherwise hope for.

Both major factions within the Tories risk a lot by being too inflexible. In fact, I’d say that their insistence that the EU is bluffing as a negotiating tactic is a projection on the part of the hard-Brexit crowd. Quite aside from the fact I don’t think the EU is bluffing, nothing says “bluffer” more than someone insisting the other person is themselves telling porkies. We tend to convince ourselves the best outcome is the most likely, which when you’ve got a shit hand translates to hoping your opponent is lying about having a good one.

Besides, refusing to budge is likely to end catastrophically for the Conservatives. Warnings that the party may split seem a bit fanciful. But the idea that the DUP end their confidence & supply agreement, disenfranchised MPs from one or the other wing of the Tory party defect elsewhere, and they lose the subsequent (and inevitable) General Election? More feasible.

But what do the DUP have to lose from sticking to their guns? Most of the people they’d upset can’t and wouldn’t vote for them anyway. They have a handful of MPs and would come off looking like they’d bargained hard and either A) won or ii) stood by their principles.

So, there are three possible outcomes for Brexit negotiations: the DUP get what they want; they don’t and we have a General Election; or, they concede demands for much greater leverage in other matters.

The worst of these for the DUP is the second and, in this eventuality, I think they still come out looking good to their voter base. All cases are a win for them, albeit big/small/moderate, respectively.

While all of this is hilariously incompetent on the part of Theresa & Co (Theresco?), I think it means we’re now more likely to see a no deal scenario. That’s because the deal now must somehow achieve the following three things:

1) No land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. (EU position and legal commitment by the UK government as part of the Good Friday Agreement)

2) No sea border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. (DUP position)

3) Control over borders that prevents the free movement of people, goods and capital between the EU and the UK. (UK government position)

It can’t be done. You can at most manage two of them.

Any attempt at a land border is doomed; it could at worst revive The Troubles, but in the very least would exact an extremely high diplomatic cost. But the EU’s preferred solution – special status for Northern Ireland – is one of the DUP’s red lines. So it seems unlikely there will be a land border or special status for Northern Ireland.

If there’s no land border, there must be a sea border. This is another of the DUP’s red lines. This leaves condition three impossible to police in any practical manner. If there is no land border and no sea border, there is just no border.

The only way to not cross a DUP red line means the Brexiteer Tories will be apoplectic. They may even vote down their own deal, which I can only see leading to a General Election.

The only hope for the Tories without the DUP is that Labour or the SNP get onboard with whatever deal is tabled. Such a deal would be such a shift from what their own MPs would accept that we are then potentially in No Confidence vote territory. Which very quickly turns into – you guessed it! – a General Election.

I worry that, faced with these three incompatible criteria, the likelihood is that no choice will be made at all. We will have no deal, which is the worst possible deal. We’ll be even more divided as a society, having proven our inability to reconcile our differences through politics and compromise. Voters on both sides of the argument would lose any last faith that their elected representatives can be effective.

That is the very definition of a broken democracy and I don’t know where it would lead. My only guess is that it would be nowhere good.

Or – and this is the tiny glimmer of hope – they do what they usually do when things look difficult, which is palm the problem off to someone else: the electorate. I don’t think this will happen, but the fact it could happen is relief from what otherwise seems to me a very grim outlook indeed.