Rishi Sunak hoped to end the week with a new agreement on the Northern Ireland Protocol. Instead, the Prime Minister delayed his plans to announce a fresh agreement in the face of concerns from the DUP – and members of the European Research Group. As I say in this week’s politics column in the magazine, the rebellion against Sunak’s plan started before any MPs have seen the final text. Downing Street insist nothing is agreed – though others accuse Sunak of having been sitting on the main thrust of a deal now for weeks.
After DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson warned Sunak there was no need to rush, a consensus has been growing among Tory MPs that the Prime Minister would not move forward as planned. However, there is still a chance of movement over the weekend before Sunak announces a deal on Monday. MPs are on a three-line whip, meaning that they have to be in the Commons. This could hint that a vote on a new deal might be imminent. But whether or not Sunak chooses to press go on the agreement will be in part down to the likelihood of the DUP getting behind it and how long Brussels is willing to co-operate.
‘It would be back to Brexit wars,’ says one Tory MP.
Any deal along the lines Sunak is discussing is likely to lead to some commotion in the House of Commons. While nothing has been publicly announced, the deal is expected to drastically reduce checks on goods between Britain and Northern Ireland, give Stormont a right to be consulted on new EU laws for the province and allow Northern Ireland VAT and state aid to be set in Westminster.
Boris Johnson has publicly said the best plan is to press on with the Northern Ireland Protocol bill – to unilaterally override parts of the agreement. He told Sky News that the legislation solves all of the issues. In truth, there is no ready-to-go solution that does that – whether negotiation or the bill.
If passed, the Protocol bill carves out the ECJ domestically but the EU could still sue the UK over breaches in an international court. If Sunak proceeds with the bill, it will face a multitude of tricky amendments in the Lords that MPs will then need to strip out.
‘It would be back to Brexit wars,’ says one Tory MP. One-nation Tory MPs could refuse to vote to remove amendments. Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary, is already arguing that the Protocol bill no longer has a legal justification.
It’s why there is a sense in No. 10 that this is an issue that cannot be pushed to the side. If Sunak presses ahead and faces down his critics in the coming days, he could come out of it as a Prime Minister willing to solve the knottiest of issues, or he could face the same fate as his predecessors – with his leadership severely damaged as a result.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Mort Laitner
Andrew Mitrovica
Gideon Levy
Grant Arthur Gochin
Priyamvada Gopal
Poonam Muttreja
Zaher Sahloul
Patrick Gathara
Obaid Mir
visit website
