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For several years, I worked for the Tories in Northern Ireland. I was motivated, not just by conservative ideas, but by a conviction that the province should be brought into the mainstream

of UK politics. As I saw it, an important aspect of British citizenship was the ability to vote for or against the parties that potentially made up our government. I got involved in party

politics first by joining the Ulster Unionists, inspired by an ambitious electoral pact that their leader, Reg Empey, had struck with David Cameron. I left when that arrangement withered.

Since then, I’ve always believed that a Conservative government was in the best interests of the country and the Union. The party placed far more emphasis than its opponents on the shared

institutions, traditions and history that bind together the UK. Today, I live in one of the few Ulster constituencies with a Conservative candidate. The local Tories are a small band of

indefatigable campaigners still trying to bring Conservative politics to Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, with great reluctance, I will be forced to vote for a different party on Thursday. I

cannot possibly support an offer to “get Brexit done” under the terms of Boris Johnson’s deal, which threatens to drive an economic and political wedge between Great Britain and Northern

Ireland. It’s desperately sad that a Conservative leader is proposing to inflict this damage on the United Kingdom and it’s sadder still that candidates in Ulster are backing his plans. The

NI Conservative party, standing under the Conservative and Unionist banner, is the only pro-Union party in Northern Ireland that supports Johnson’s Brexit deal. Mainly, that is out of

necessity, as local candidates are signed off by CCHQ and promote the national manifesto, which is devised in London. But Northern Ireland’s version of the Tory party, which claims some

independence to draft policies specific to the province, missed a rare chance to be relevant when it refused to offer at least nominal resistance to the withdrawal agreement. Just after the

election was called, Boris Johnson visited Northern Ireland briefly and, as was the habit of previous Conservative leaders, he made a token visit to a private meeting of NI Tories. He was

not meaningfully involved in their campaign. Captured on a smartphone camera, the prime minister gave stuttering reassurances that, under his deal, there would be no tariffs, checks or

paperwork for trade between the province and Great Britain. Many activists took that reassurance at face value. At least one Tory candidate in Northern Ireland published social media videos

praising the deal for securing “the best of both worlds” for the province, including privileged access to the EU single market and “unfettered access” to the market in Great Britain. But to

believe the Conservatives’ current message on what the deal means for Northern Ireland, you have to be either credulous, misinformed or self-deluding. Back in October, in the brief period

between the prime minister securing an agreement and calling an election, there wasn’t much dispute that new barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain were planned. Almost

daily, fresh details emerged of the type of hurdles traders might face. It was only after the campaign started that Johnson started making unlikely claims that no paperwork or checks would

be required. His assertions were always at odds with the government’s own impact assessment. Even Tory ministers admitted that companies in Northern Ireland were required to complete export

declaration forms for goods destined for Great Britain, estimating the cost at anything between £15 and £56 per declaration. The Treasury document says that  98 per cent of firms in the

province are “likely to struggle to bear this cost” because of their modest size. Alongside the economic consequences, the leaked text says that constitutionally the agreement could mean,

“NI symbolically separated from the union/economic union undermined.” The Conservative party in Northern Ireland was formed, against resistance from the national leadership, by people who

believed in equal citizenship and expressly wanted the province to be integrated more closely with the political life of the rest of the UK. Now, it looks less like a vehicle for those

principles and more like an unthinking fan-club for high-profile Tory politicians in London. That’s a terrible shame for a regional party, many of whose activists are well-intentioned and

hard-working, despite suffering repeated electoral disappointments and frequent humiliations. I wish them well in the future, but this time I’ll be voting for a candidate who puts the Union

ahead of party loyalty.