1 year ago
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Key events
Theresa Villiers says MPs must get vote on protocol deal
As my colleague Lisa O’Carroll reports, the former Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers, a leader Brexiter, said this morning it is “crucial parliament has a vote” on the much-anticipated deal.
Sunak and von der Leyen to unveil protocol deal as leading Tory Brexiter suggests PM has done 'very well' but not enough
Good morning. Rishi Sunak is today unveiling his own Brexit deal – an agreement with the EU on changes to the Northern Ireland protocol. Theresa May lost office because she could not get her own Brexit deal accepted by her party, or parliament. Sunak is in a much stronger position than she was (the issue is more marginal, the Tory Brexiters are less potent, most MPs just want to move on, and Sunak has Labour on his side) but it is still, as Peter Walker reports in his overnight summary, a perilous moment for him.
The Daily Mail splash headline sums up the key question for the day.
But sell the deal to whom? There are at least five groups that matter.
The DUP: The main unionist party has set seven tests for the deal, and it has said it will not lift its boycott of the power-sharing in Northern Ireland, which has led to the executive being suspended for the last year, if it is not happy. DUP MPs have been complaining about not being shown the text of the deal in advance, and the most hardline have recently been setting what seem like increasingly unrealistic demands for what it must say.
Tory Brexiters in the European Research Group (ERG): Broadly they claim to have the same concerns as the DUP and some of them say they will be guided by the DUP’s response, and that they will reject the deal if the DUP does. But their politics are not 100% aligned. Some of them are Boris Johnson supporters who are motivated in part by animus towards Sunak. But they are also Tories, who might be swayed by the argument that a split won’t help the party at the next election.
People in Northern Ireland: The deal is supposed to remove some of the obstacles affecting trade going from Britain to Northern Ireland. The fact that Sinn Féin MPs do not take their seats in the Commons means that the DUP gets a disproprotionate voice in Northern Ireland. But they don’t represent all unionists, and they only got 28% of the vote in last year’s assembly elections. The public as a whole in Northern Ireland is much less critical of the protocol than the DUP, and more likely to back Sunak’s deal.
Conservative party members: Sunak was not chosen as leader by party members, and a ConservativeHome survey published yesterday suggests 41% of members do not support his policy on the protocol, and only 36% do. If members are unhappy, that won’t really show this week. But it will create a problem for Sunak in the future.
The UK electorate: Outside Northern Ireland, and particularly in England, Britons take little interest in what happens on the other side of the Irish Sea and “solving” a Northern Ireland problems confer little or no electoral benefit. But the protocol is also about “getting Brexit done”, and if Sunak does conclude a successful protocol deal, he might get some credit for competence.
Although much of what is in the deal has been reported, we have not seen the full details, and we do not know yet how the key groups will react. We will know a lot more tonight, but it might take some days before the DUP or the ERG deliver a definitive yes or no. From No 10’s point of view, at least it has not been firmly rejected already.
This morning Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary and an arch-Brexiter loyal to Boris Johnson, gave Sunak a mixed assessment. He said he thought Sunak had done “very well”, but possibly not enough to satisify the DUP.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Keir Starmer gives a speech on Labour’s plans to increase growth.
11am: Kate Forbes, the SNP leadership candidate, holds a campaign event.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Lunchtime: Rishi Sunak is due to hold a meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, to sign off the deal on the Northern Ireland protocol. After that Sunak will chair a cabinet meeting where the cabinet will be briefed on the deal.
Around 3.30pm: Sunak is due to hold a press conference with von der Leyen in Windsor.
Late afternoon/early evening: Sunak is expected to make a statement on the deal to MPs.
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