Revolt over Northern Ireland led by two former prime ministers
Rishi Sunak has suffered a smaller than expected rebellion by Tory MPs over his Northern Ireland Brexit bill after Boris Johnson and Liz Truss both came out against the compromise.
The prime minister won a Commons endorsement for the Windsor framework after MPs voted by 515 to 29 to endorse a key element of the plan with the support of Labour.
The 22 Tory MPs who defied a three-line whip to vote against the government included Johnson, Truss and the former home secretary Priti Patel. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Simon Clarke and Jake Berry, who all served in the cabinet under Truss, voted against the deal, as did the former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
A further 48 Tories did not vote on the motion but this included some, such as the former Welsh secretary Sir Robert Buckland, who are known to be in favour of the deal and would have been granted permission to be away from the Commons by whips.
After the vote Sunak was seen celebrating with the former Brexit hardliner and present Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker, an enthusiastic supporter of the Windsor framework.
The rebellion was significantly smaller than members of the European Research Group of MPs (ERG) had expected, a fact that will delight Downing Street — especially given the vocal opposition of Truss and Johnson.
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Ministers will now move to ratify the deal when the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, meets his EU counterpart at a meeting of the joint committee on Friday.
As the debate began Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, told the Commons that the Windsor framework “restores practical sovereignty” to the UK, and to the province in particular, and would bring an “age of prosperity to Northern Ireland like we’ve never seen before”.
He said: “It addresses the democratic deficit, restores the balance of the Belfast Good Friday agreement and ends the prospect of dynamic alignment.”
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, said he was not questioning the motivation of ministers who sought to make improvements to the original protocol and wanted to see the restoration of devolved government in Northern Ireland. But he added: “We’ve got to get it right.”
He said: “We have not yet fully addressed this fundamental problem, which is the continued application of EU law for the manufacturing of all goods in Northern Ireland.
“I am not saying that where Northern Ireland businesses trade with the EU that EU standards and rules should not apply. I’m saying we can allow for that. But what I am not accepting is a situation where every business in my constituency must comply with EU rules even if they don’t sell a single widget to the European Union.”
ALAMY
Mark Francois asked the Northern Ireland secretary to accept that the Stormont brake was not a “veto” but a “route to arbitration”. He said the brake would not really allow unionists to prevent new EU laws from being imposed on the province.
“The EU can object and it’s referred to independent arbitration where the UK could lose,” he said. “That is not a veto.”
Geoffrey Cox, the former attorney-general, said that if the EU had offered the same deal to Theresa May that it was offering to Sunak “history might have turned out rather differently”.
He described the Windsor framework as a “significant and major achievement” that “requires, compels, commands the ascent of every” Conservative MP.
“[It is a] significant improvement on the protocol as it was agreed in 2019 and why would we not at least agree to an improvement? Even if we say at the same time it is not the last and final word [on Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit future].”
In a statement before the debate, Johnson said that Sunak’s deal would mean “either that Northern Ireland remained captured by the EU legal order — and was increasingly divergent from the rest of the UK — or . . . mean that the whole of the UK was unable properly to diverge and take advantage of Brexit”.
He added: “That is not acceptable. Instead, the best course of action is to proceed with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, and make sure that we take back control. I will be voting against the proposed arrangements today.”
A source close to Truss said she did not feel the deal would “satisfactorily resolve the issues thrown up by” the Northern Ireland protocol and that it “almost fatally impinges” on the UK’s ability to diverge from EU rules and regulations.
Source: The TImes
Recent Comments