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How could Theresa May have been caught out by the DUP? Everyone knows Northern Irish politics is famed for its willing compromise

Does Theresa May ever really laugh? Rather than emit a delicately defiant titter – the equivalent of a boxer flashing a grin to con the other guy that the scything left hook did no damage – whenever someone asks her why she’s still in the job. We know she can do that with practised ease.

But when she’s recovering from another murderous day as a human punchbag, chilling over one of the Arthur Askey husband’s nutritious baked bean and whisky suppers, does she succumb to uncontrollable giggling until she sends a wispy rivulet of Scotch through her nostrils? Unlikely as it seems, I hope so. Laughter isn’t in fact the best medicine (it should never be used as a substitute for insulin). But it is extraordinarily cathartic, and she could use a bit of that.

If the unremitting horror hasn’t sent her over the edge into gasping hysteria before, tonight could be the night. Monstrous as her situation already was, it has become much worse. Not only is she pincered between the two warring wings of her own party, she now finds herself at sea, caught between the Rock of Gibraltar and the exceedingly hard place that is Northern Irish sectarian politics.

The Spanish threaten to veto her EU agreement over the handful of paragraphs in its 585 pages concerning future negotiations over Gibraltar. The DUP, having abstained on various Budget amendments on Monday, threatens to cancel its supply and confidence permanently over the border backstop.

If May feels aggrieved at being blackmailed on two fronts, she should also relish the symmetry. Her Brexit strategy now rests on a two-pronged blackmail of own, as she tries to menace Remainers and Ultras respectively with the prospects of no deal and a people’s vote.

While the Spanish threat looks like the kind of opportunistic posturing that could be resolved by a textual tweak, the DUP’s is more serious.

You cannot blame the PM for being caught out. No one could have foreseen that depending on Arlene Foster’s cuddly troupe of 10 Westminster MPs for her majority might be risky. If one thing defines the history of politicised Protestantism in Northern Ireland, it is the willingness to compromise. So to hear the likes of Ian Paisley Jnr and Sammy Wilson coin a gleaming new mantra “No Surrender” must have come as a shock. And Foster should have been explicit about her rigid opposition to Northern Ireland being treated differently in any way – other than over gay marriage, of course, and abortion rights – from the rest of the UK.

Rather than spell out her adamant refusal to support a deal that didn’t rule out any chance ever of a border down the Irish Sea, she described it as a “red line”. The full quote, just to underline the ambiguity, ran: “The red line is blood red.”

It’s still very early days with this sub-crisis, and there are cinders of hope for the PM. It would be nonsensical to dismiss the DUP as dinosaurs, for example, when the creationists among them will confirm that there never were dinosaurs. And they might prove more malleable than they like to appear. If Paisley’s dad, the Reverend Ian, could end up with Martin McGuinness for a bestie, nothing (except letting gay people wed, obviously, and allowing women control over their own bodies) can be ruled out.

But for now, as the yellow brick road towards Brexit turns orange, the DUP seems no more minded to surrender than Dorothy. So what on earth can May do about that?

Presumably, she will try to serenade Foster with a burst of “Come On Arlene” (“Sure now, don’t be so mean. At this moment, you mean evereeeething”), by Brexy’s Midnight Runners. But Foster hardly seems the type to be seduced by desperation into lying back and thinking of England.

When the schmoozing gets her nowhere, May might counter-threaten her with the notion that no deal will lead to a united Ireland. The best of British to her with that one. What this narrative urgently needs, along with another intransigent clique screaming “betrayal”, is a new strand of blackmail.

It takes pluck and chutzpah for a hostage to keep making empty threats to her captors, and no one doubts that May has those qualities in spades. What she doesn’t have, however, is a better than minuscule chance of bluffing her way to this pot with this hand.

One or two of the other players might fold. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s European Research Group, scrambling around for no-confidence votes, seems to have blown its stack with a terrible bluff of its own. The Spanish probably don’t have enough chips to do much damage. But even if both leave the table, Remainers in the Commons will have to be nose blind to fold now with the scent of a people’s vote getting stronger by the day.

Even if they did, May will need a minor miracle to survive the naval battle in the Irish Sea without permanently losing the DUP MPs whose support has been keeping her in this farcical pastiche of power. Last night’s abstentions were a shot across the bows of a ship of state which, under her nominal command, is defenceless.

No one has needed laughter therapy more than Theresa May. If she requires a catalyst and Askey isn’t up to it, I’d recommend listening again to the Johnners and Aggers giggling fit with which which such a fabled fan of cricket must be familiar. Failing that, she could watch Kind Hearts And Coronets, the funniest British film ever made, in which Admiral the Lord Horatio D’Ascoyne becomes a timeless emblem of heroic futility by insisting on going down with his ship.