LONDON — A Brexit deal may almost be done, but for Rishi Sunak, the hardest yards still lie ahead.
With a draft deal now all but hammered out, the U.K. prime minister must next confront the seemingly-impossible task that brought down his predecessor Theresa May in 2019: persuading the warring Tories to rally behind a compromise deal on Northern Ireland.
Despite repeated official denials, people close to EU-U.K. talks on the long-running Northern Ireland protocol row say a technical agreement is now sitting on Sunak’s desk to consider. The PM must now figure out how to sell an agreement to skeptical MPs in his own Conservative Party as well as Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), staunch opponents of the protocol.
A person familiar with the discussions said Brussels is waiting for Sunak to scrutinize the governance chapter in the technical deal hammered out by EU and U.K. officials, and decide whether to stamp his signature on the agreement. Governance — primarily concerning the role the EU’s top court plays in the protocol arrangements — is likely to prove a key sticking point for Brexiteers, who are already agitating for a vote on any agreement.
“Whilst compromise is something that all of us should and will be willing to consider, there are certain issues with EU law and jurisdiction that just have to be dealt with,” former Tory Cabinet minister Theresa Villiers told Times Radio this weekend.
Villiers, a prominent figure in the 2016 Vote Leave campaign, made clear her fellow Brexiteers will not allow Sunak to push his deal through without a House of Commons vote.
“It’s pretty much inconceivable that changes to the protocol could go through and be implemented by the government without votes in parliament,” she said. “This is such a fundamental question that I think MPs will need to be able to give their view on it. I can’t conceive of circumstances where parliament could be cut out of this question.”
The protocol, agreed as part of the Brexit divorce deal, sees Northern Ireland continue to follow the EU’s customs union and single market rules, in an effort to avoid a politically-sensitive hard border with the neighboring Republic of Ireland, which remains an EU member state.
But Northern Ireland’s unionist politicians have long objected to the protocol, with the DUP boycotting power-sharing in the region and calling for the agreement to be scrapped. Unionists argue that customs and sanitary checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland effectively separate it from the rest of the U.K., and are backed by critics in Sunak’s Conservative Party who resent the role played by European courts in protocol governance.
Sunak was handed a proposed compromise at the start of last week — but is still “micromanaging” the detail while sticking to the holding line that negotiations continue, a second person with knowledge of the situation said, even though officials believe the proposals meet the DUP’s seven tests for endorsing a deal.
“Bits of the deal are starting to leak. When is Rishi going to tell the Cabinet, the ERG and the DUP about it? It’s like the deal has fallen into a black hole,” the second person said.
“The EU also wants to get on with other things and we don’t have long until the Belfast agreement anniversary to get power-sharing back up and running,” they added, referring to the looming April anniversary of the historic Northern Irish peace agreement, seen as an unofficial deadline by both sides to resolve the dispute.
But an announcement on an agreement might yet take weeks, officials on both sides said, and the expectation is that the timetable will be led by Sunak as he tries to square those most likely to oppose an agreement. In London, Sunak’s official spokesman insisted the U.K. and EU are still hammering out details. “There is still significant work to be done and there will be further talks this week across all areas,” he said.
‘Positive atmosphere’
Speaking at a press conference Monday, the European Commission’s vice-president and Brexit point-man Maroš Šefčovič said “progress is being made, but difficulties remain,” and warned the final package must “not only work in practice” but should also be “acceptable to all the numerous stakeholders we have around the table” — in what would appear to be a reference to the DUP.
Šefčovič refused to comment on media reports suggesting the EU is willing to accept that goods shipped from Great Britain to Northern Ireland — and intended to stay there — should be treated to lighter-touch checks compared to goods heading into the EU’s single market via Ireland. That would amount to a “green” and “red” lane model at Northern Irish ports, as proposed by the U.K., and — RTE reported — would reduce not just customs formalities, but also animal health and food safety processes and checks.
If the EU is now willing to accept a reduction of such checks to “near zero,” it would be an “important shift” in the Commission’s position, said Raoul Ruparel, a former Brexit adviser to May — who was brought down by her party’s repeated opposition to a Brexit compromise to Northern Ireland.
Šefčovič suggested the British proposal of a “green lane” was similar to the EU’s own proposed solution of an “express lane” — but stressed the EU can only show flexibility on customs paperwork if the U.K. provides the Commission with “very solid information about the trade flows.” The two sides recently talked up progress on allowing EU access to British databases for tracking goods.
Any customs breakthrough, however, will need to come with a significant shift on governance if it is to withstand contact with the protocol’s fiercest critics.
“It is either protocol or power-sharing,” DUP MP Ian Paisley told the BBC’s Nolan Show. “We can’t have both.” On the role of the Court of Justice of the European Union, he warned: “We can’t have an issue where Northern Ireland is answerable and accountable to something they have no say over.”
“There might be some agreement at a technical level on customs processes,” noted Villiers, the Brexiteer Tory MP. “But … actually tweaks to customs processes simply don’t address the biggest issues with the protocol.”
For Rishi Sunak — as for Theresa May — the way through is anything but clear.
