Ministers on Wednesday pushed ahead with a bill to rip up Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland, a move that none of the Tory leadership candidates have challenged.
The bill has poisoned relations with the EU, raising fears of a trade war and the prospect of British scientists being excluded from a €95bn research programme, but it is expected to survive the leadership contest.
Downing Street has said the proposed legislation, which would override parts of the protocol, is “agreed policy” and will continue its passage through the Commons while outgoing prime minister Johnson leads a caretaker government.
The bill, which began its line-by-line scrutiny stage on the floor of the House of Commons on Wednesday, is expected to face tough opposition when it reaches the House of Lords.
None of the Tory leadership contenders — including former chancellor Rishi Sunak, trade minister Penny Mordaunt and foreign secretary Liz Truss — has committed to scrapping it. Any such move would be unpopular with some Tory MPs and party members.
Sunak resisted the Northern Ireland protocol bill while in cabinet, warning it could lead to reprisals from the EU. But the former chancellor on Monday assured members of the European Research Group, the pro-Brexit club of Tory MPs, at a private meeting that he would allow the bill to pass unamended, according to attendees.
One ally of Sunak said: “Rishi would let the bill go through, but there would be a different tone.” Sunak’s spokeswoman declined to comment.
One senior ERG source said they were reassured by Sunak’s comments but said that no senior member of the group was likely to back the former chancellor in the leadership contest.
“We care about other things other than Brexit,” the source said. “We got no commitments to cut tax at all. The vision he gave us was not a vision of hope — it was frankly managerial.”
The ERG met on Wednesday to discuss the leadership contest, but the group — thought to number scores of members — will not endorse a single candidate, with support spread between rightwing challengers Truss, attorney-general Suella Braverman and former equalities minister Kemi Badenoch.
One cabinet member predicted that even if the protocol bill reached the statute book, the removal of Johnson from Downing Street would make a negotiated settlement of the dispute more likely.
“There’s no trust at the moment, but a new leader would change everything,” said one cabinet minister, claiming that Brussels and Emmanuel Macron, French president, would want to engage with a new leader — particularly if it was Sunak.
One EU diplomat said: “A new face always makes a difference. It provides an opportunity. One approach would be to broaden the discussion over Northern Ireland into a much wider-ranging attempt to reboot the relationship.”
Officials speculated that areas for potential discussion as part of a grand bargain over Northern Ireland could include unblocking the UK’s membership of the Horizon Europe science programme and the prospect of a veterinary agreement to reduce border frictions.
Last month, Truss introduced the protocol bill, saying it would “fix” practical problems with the agreement that Brussels is refusing to solve, but EU officials warn that the legislation will worsen tensions.
Truss has argued that the protocol has created difficulties in supplying goods to Northern Ireland from Britain, and undermines the 1998 Good Friday Agreement between nationalists and unionists that ended three decades of conflict.
The row over the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, which has brought local politics in the region to a standstill, loomed over the bonfires and parades held annually by unionists and loyalists on July 11-12 in celebration of their UK identity.
One pyre, near the staunchly loyalist Rathcoole estate in County Antrim, was decked with signs reading “Protocol must go” and “Compromise = sell out” as a band played “Land of Hope and Glory”.
“I’d like to see Liz Truss get in. She’s tough on the protocol and what I call the dictatorship of the EU,” said Richard Bell, 79, a retired electrical engineer, watching a marching band in north Belfast.
“The protocol is a mess. They’re treating us as if we aren’t British,” he added as marchers commemorated the victory of the Protestant king William of Orange over the Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
The Democratic Unionist party has paralysed local politics by boycotting the region’s power-sharing assembly and executive until the Irish Sea border goes.
James McCluskey, 33, who works in banking, feared that if “we give an inch, then an inch, then an inch . . . eventually I’ll be showing my passport to go to Scotland”. He supported the bill’s proposal for a “green lane” for goods coming from Great Britain and staying in Northern Ireland.
But while celebrating their Britishness on the “Twelfth”, many unionists professed little interest in who becomes their next prime minister. “I don’t think the Conservatives have anyone to put in that I would trust,” said Victor Molyneaux, 63, a HGV driver.
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2022-07-13 15:17:24Z
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