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The DUP has stepped up pressure on Theresa May over her Brexit claims, saying she could vote against this month's budget if the prime minister breaks the party's red lines at the week's EU summit next.
The threat – which could theoretically overthrow May, or even bring down the government – has not been publicly announced, but has been informed the bbc and Sky News by sources from the Northern Ireland party.
According to reports, if the DUP believes that May has given up too much at the tight meeting next week in Brussels, the party could withdraw the support of its 10 deputies to vote on the budget, seeing it potentially defeated.
Traditionally, votes on the budget were considered trust issues in a government, which meant that general elections would be called in case of loss of one of them. This is no longer the case in the law on fixed-term parliaments, but such a defeat could fatally undermine May's position and spark calls for a vote on the calling of elections.
The DUP, which has entered into a so-called trust and supply agreement to support the May government since last year's election, has expressed concern over the prospect of any Brexit deal Avoiding the possibility of a difficult Irish border by making the regulatory regime of Northern Ireland more closely linked to the EU, creating a de facto customs border in the Irish Sea.
At the Conservative conference last week, Nigel Dodds, the DUP's leader in the House of Commons, said the party would vote against May if she returned from Brussels with an agreement to re-inspect goods coming from 39, Northern Ireland from Northern Ireland. "We will vote against it. We will vote for our red lines, "he said.
DUP leader Arlene Foster had previously stated that the party's confidence and supply arrangement with the Conservatives was "a party-to-party" and not with May herself, which would have prompted the DUP to want force May of No 10.
Foster reiterated his party's position at its meetings in Brussels on Tuesday. "I am the leader of the democratic unionist party. The index is in the title, "Foster said after a meeting with EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier.
"I am a trade unionist, I believe in the union of the United Kingdom, the four elements of the United Kingdom. We do not want Northern Ireland to go in a different direction than the rest of the United Kingdom. "
Treasury Minister Mel Stride said: "The position of the Prime Minister has always been very clear on this issue of the lack of border on the sea of Ireland, we told it to many times."
The DUP is committed to opposing any new trade barrier between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Stride told BBC Radio 4's World At One: "I will not go into the details of what can or can not happen in the negotiations at the moment, other than to say that I am extremely confident of all that I know. and I've seen, and all the discussions I've had, that a very, very firm position will be taken on this subject.
"The prime minister has said very clearly that no British prime minister would ever put himself in the position where they would begin to undo the economic and sovereign integrity of the United Kingdom."
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