This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Has Rishi Sunak’s NI deal silenced Tory Eurosceptics?

George Parker
So the prime minister has negotiated a new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland. But is the revised protocol enough to silence the Eurosceptic voices in his Tory party and the rest of the country? Well, it’s a mixed bag.

Boris Johnson
I’m going to find it very difficult to vote for something like this myself, because I believed that we should have done something different. And Brexit is nothing if we in this country don’t do things differently.

Ann Widdecombe
We were sold yesterday a packet of nonsense, and my only hope is that there are now going to be enough people looking at this that it will unravel over the next week as people realise it isn’t as it was presented.

Steve Baker
This is an important moment for me personally because I can authentically say he’s done it. If only everybody will read the text. Think seriously about what an amazing achievement this is.

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George Parker
The views there of ex-PM Boris Johnson, former Tory Eurosceptic MP Ann Widdecombe and the Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker. Welcome to Payne’s Politics, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times, with me, George Parker in the hot seat vacated by Seb Payne for just a few more weeks before the pod is relaunched, with a new format and a new name. Coming up: Rishi Sunak has cleared the first hurdle on the Northern Ireland protocol. He’s got an agreement in place with the EU, but how is he going to manage dissent within his own ranks? Or is Eurosceptic opposition crumbling? The FT’s political correspondent Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe and David Gauke, the former Tory cabinet minister and New Statesman columnist, will be on hand to discuss. But we kick off with what the deal on the new-look Northern Ireland protocol, aka the Windsor framework, means in practice. The FT’s Ireland correspondent Jude Webber and Andy Bounds, our Brussels correspondent, will be unpicking the details.

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So the prime minister’s been meeting with Eurosceptic MPs to sell them his revamped deal on the Northern Ireland protocol. And he was in Northern Ireland this week, too, whipping up support there, notably from a sceptical DUP.

Rishi Sunak
We get this right, if we get this framework implemented, we get the executive back up and running here. Northern Ireland is in the unbelievably special position in having privileged access not just to the UK home market, which is enormous — fifth-biggest in the world — but also the European Union single market. Nobody else has that. No one. Only you guys, only here. And that is the prize.

George Parker
It’s almost as if Brexiteer Rishi Sunak’s just discovered the advantages of being part of the EU single market. Oh, happy days. But enough pre-Brexit nostalgia. Jude Webber and Andy Bounds, thanks very much for joining me. Jude, this is a deal primarily about Northern Ireland, of course. What does it mean in practice?

Jude Webber
Well, it means that the things that consumers really care about, like getting parcels on time, getting seed potatoes, getting seeds, getting sausages, all those things that’ll be made simpler. For businesses, it also removes an awful lot of the burden of paperwork and will make everything flow much more smoothly. And it might just mean that they have a functioning government bank.

George Parker
So Jude, there was another element to the package, which was the so-called “Stormont brake”, which is the rabbit out of the hat of this whole package. Does it actually amount to a veto on new EU laws as they apply in Northern Ireland?

Jude Webber
It amounts to a potential sort of on-paper veto, you know, to new trade rules as they apply — not existing ones. But in fact the bar to using it is so high it probably won’t actually make any practical difference. So it’s certainly being touted as giving Northern Ireland’s local politicians a proper say in the laws that govern them, which was one of the big concerns of unionists. But it’s actually a little bit hollow.

George Parker
This is the so-called democratic deficit, isn’t it, of course. Now, Andy Bounds, what does this whole deal do for wider EU-UK relations?

Andy Bounds
Well, it certainly sets them on a better footing. Obviously, so many areas of co-operation are being held back by this almost two years of constant sniping over the protocol and talks that then broke down. We’ve been through several British negotiations once again, going back to Lord Frost, Liz Truss, and it was finally James Cleverly and Rishi Sunak and indeed Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, who seemed to get this over the line by impressing the commission, I think, and the EU member states, with their seriousness and their genuine attempt to put relations on a better footing. You know, post-war in Ukraine, the two sides have been working very closely on sanctions, on foreign policy, on defence policy and energy policy. So I think that, you know, there are future possible co-operation areas now being unlocked, but there’s still quite a lot of mistrust and bad feeling in Brussels, which will take a while to dissipate.

George Parker
Well, that’s for sure. But it’s remarkable, isn’t it, that they were able to land this deal so successfully, both at Westminster and with EU member states. The fact that they’ve been working on this for months and delivered what appears to be quite a successful compromise that must build some confidence between the two sides.

Andy Bounds
Yes, I mean, certainly here they’re still waiting to see just how opposition will form in the UK. They’ve been pleasantly surprised, I think. You haven’t heard too much from the ERG and even from the DUP. But we’re still in the early days and I think two things really made a difference. One was this agreement to share data so the EU can look into the UK’s computer systems and see what’s coming across the Irish Sea so they can see whether goods are destined for Northern Ireland or if they’re heading into the single market where there are different rules. So things like the trees and so on is worrying about species that might upset the indigenous population of nature.

George Parker
Traditional English oak tree, Andy, I think is what you’re saying?

Andy Bounds
That seems to be slightly bizarre. The classic one is titanium dioxide, which is a food colouring which is allowed in the UK but banned in the EU as sort of potentially dangerous and therefore lots of cakes from the UK could get onto the shelves in Northern Ireland. And therefore I think there’s a feeling that they can trust the British to police this which didn’t exist before. And the second thing really comes down to Boris Johnson’s point, which is that Brexit has turned out not to be the sort of great deregulatory dash for Singapore-on-Thames that many wanted. You know, most standards are still aligned with the EU and therefore the EU has less worries that, you know, chlorinated chicken from the US or whatever it might be, might come in through Northern Ireland, into Ireland and heading onto the plates of consumers in the single market.

George Parker
Yeah, I mean Boris Johnson was saying that if Brexit was about anything, it was about divergence. The only downside of that, of course, is that most businesses don’t actually want divergence because it complicates their trading arrangements. But I’ll leave that to one side to . . . Jude we’ll be discussing later whether the Tory party will row in behind this new Windsor framework. But perhaps even more importantly, will the DUP buy it?

Jude Webber
The jury’s still out. Honestly, it’s very hard to tell at the moment because there’s a gag order being put on most party officials and most politicians in the party. There’s a few mavericks who’ve kind of defied that order. Sammy Wilson thinking of Sammy Wilson, Ian Paisley, who have come out firing on all cylinders to say it’s really not good enough. And the DUP has had seven tests by which to judge whether or not the deal makes the grade. And Ian Paisley, Jr has already said it doesn’t cut the mustard. It’s a very, very delicate balancing act for Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader. I mean, he probably himself personally would like to go back in.

George Parker
Hmm . . . 

Jude Webber
But he’s under quite a lot of pressure, both from within this flank of his party and from hardline unionists outside his party. He’s got council elections coming up on May the 18th. And so you might want to try and just tread water, play for time, not make any decisions now until after May. Whether or not he’ll get away with that, that’s still a long time away. So that’s a gamble. But ultimately, my sense is that they will have to row in behind this because there is no better deal and there’s nowhere else for them to go. But these things always take time. Sinn Féin this week were very, very careful not to put a time frame on how long they’re actually going to give the DUP to make its mind up. They said that the next time they try to recall the Stormont Assembly, which is one of the powersharing institutions that was set up in 1998 in the peace agreement, the Good Friday agreement. They say the next time they try to do this will be the time that it actually worked. So they’re not going to turn the screws on the DUP immediately because it would be counterproductive. But you know, nobody can sit and wait for the DUP for years and years.

George Parker
Mmm . . . So, Andy, you mentioned earlier that you thought that this might be the start of a great new relationship between the UK and the EU and new doors could open up in terms of cooperation. What areas of cooperation do you think we might see coming into view now?

Andy Bounds
Well, the first obvious one is the Horizon Research program, €95.5 billion program, which the UK did very well out of. I actually got slightly more money out than it put in because of its science base. It’s in the agreements that the UK signed with the EU that the UK should be associated with Horizon. But it hasn’t happened and it’s definitely been held up by these protocol deals. So now those talks are on the line. The commission president has said that as soon as this deal is implemented, talks can begin.

George Parker
Hmm . . . 

Andy Bounds
But you and I obviously have discovered that the British government still has second thoughts about whether they actually want to do Horizon. And in a story that will be on our website.

George Parker
And whether to go for more of a global framework instead. Yeah.

Andy Bounds
Yeah. And then the other area is energy, where there’s interconnectors with the EU and the UK relies on imports of energy over the winter. They could become a little bit cheaper if there are fixes on the trading regime. Migration is another key area. If Rishi Sunak wants to stop these small boats coming across the Channel, he probably needs the EU’s help. So those are the obvious early wins. And then they’ll be things like defence, maybe cyber security, financial services, which I think the City of London is looking for is rather less likely. The EU doesn’t have much appetite for opening up its markets again to British financial services companies.

George Parker
So baby steps. But obviously confidence does need to be rebuilt on the two sides.

Andy Bounds
Yeah, indeed.

George Parker
Jude, just finally to you. If the DUP doesn’t go back into the Stormont assembly, let’s say, before the local elections in May. At what point does the British government say, hang on a sec, we cannot have a single party in Northern Ireland having a boycott on the whole process of self-government in Northern Ireland.

Jude Webber
It’s very difficult for them to say that because all of the political institutions in Northern Ireland are built on this peace agreement from 1998, the Good Friday Agreement. And we’re just coming up to the 25th anniversary of that on the 10th of April. They all trot out this line it’s about preserving the delicate balance of power between the two traditional communities. But actually, it really is. And so it’s very, very difficult for the government to say, well, actually, we’ve had enough of this because there’s no going back to direct rule as it was then, because any future direct rule would require a much bigger input from the Irish government.

George Parker
Because you don’t just change the rules and say, right, if the DUP doesn’t wanna do this, we’ll look to another Unionist party, the Ulster Unionist party.

Jude Webber
The Ulster Unionist party is very small. It doesn’t have enough votes and although it would represent the unionist view, it wouldn’t have the same weight and so unionists would feel that their voice has been diluted. There are a lot of calls in from the Alliance party which takes no position on whether or not Northern Ireland should remain as part of the UK or leave and reunite with Ireland. The alliance is calling for changes to the way the house sharing is run as a precondition almost of going back. But fundamentally, the two big parties, the DUP on the Unionist side and Sinn Féin on the nationalist side, they’re actually quite happy with having a veto and they don’t really want to give it up. So there’ll be a lot of horsetrading, a lot of haggling ahead. But actually I think the UK government will just have to keep on feeding out the row for a while yet. They can’t really just say, right, our patience is not.

George Parker
Okay and Andy, as one final, very brief question to you. What’s the mood like in Brussels at the end of quite a tumultuous week on the post-Brexit relationship between the two sides?

Andy Bounds
Relief. (Laughs) Sheer relief. They’re so pleased to have got this resolved, partly because they’ve got so many other things to deal with. You know at the moment they’re discussing how much ammunition to send to Ukraine and how to use the European budget to do that. One diplomat said to me, You know, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Brexit is becoming very much a minor issue here and to get that off their table is very, very welcome.

George Parker
Andy Bounds, Jude Webber, thanks for joining us.

So on Monday, Rishi Sunak traveled to Windsor to sign the protocol deal with Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, and hotfoot it back to Westminster to sell it to MPs. One of the first to welcome it was Labour leader Keir Starmer.

Keir Starmer
This deal is not perfect, but because we recognise that the UK agreed to the protocol and has an obligation to make it work because we recognise that for the protocol to work there will inevitably be trade-offs. And because we always recognise that peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland is hard won, Labour will support the Windsor framework. I hope that in coming days others will come to support the agreement in the same spirit and join Labour in voting to make the protocol work. In voting to face the future in voting for country before party. Thank you, Mr Speaker. (cheers)

George Parker
Starmer signaled in advance that he backed the deal, obviously hoping to draw a distinction between his statesmanlike-behaviour and a disorderly Tory party squabbling over Brexit again. But by the end of the week, few Tory MPs, leaving aside Boris Johnson, have criticised the deal, let alone condemned it. I’m joined now by the FT’s Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe and David Gauke, a former Tory minister and now an acute observer of Conservative politics for the New Statesman. Jasmine, how would you describe the Tory response to the deal?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
It’s been quite interesting actually, because you would expect that you would hear from those on the right of the party, those ardent Brexiteers really having a lot to say about Rishi Sunak’s announcement on Monday. But the whole atmosphere feels a little bit muted. It was quite striking that you had individuals like Steve Baker who played a prominent role in some of the post-2016 Brexit debates. He’s now the current Northern Ireland minister. He was called the quote, unquote “hard man of Brexit”. He actually said it’s a really great deal. We heard from David Davis. He’s the former Brexit secretary who also backed the agreement. Now we know that the ERG, who’s chaired by Mark Francois, they’re still deliberating and debating about how they engage with the Windsor framework. And so it really feels like the bulk of Tory MPs are rallying behind this deal. But I think there’s a general feeling among Tory MPs I’ve spoken to that actually voters are concerned about small boats, about the economy and in the eyes of many people, Brexit sort of done and dusted. So Tory MPs don’t want to be the party that’s continually fighting over Brexit. They want to get this over the line and then focus on other issues looking forward to the next general election.

George Parker
And David, you and I have lived through some of this, haven’t we? I think it’s over 10 years now since David Cameron fatefully announced the referendum on Brexit. Over the next few days the ERG lawyers are, as Jasmine said, are gonna be poring over the details. Do you think we’re gonna see much of a rebellion on this?

David Gauke
It really doesn’t feel that they’re up for a fight. I think the ERG back in my day in parliament, you know we’re, quite careful not to engage in fights where they couldn’t put up a proper show of strength. So there was quite a bit of scepticism about the withdrawal agreements that Boris Johnson delivered in October 2019 but they didn’t wanna pick a fight then because they thought they would be split. I also think that Brexit is not terribly popular at the moment, and whereas once upon a time the strategy was to fight the next general election with a big Brexit divide to try to keep those red wall voters in the Tory camp, now it doesn’t feel like that’s such a clever strategy. So I think they might well go through the agreement and find it’s not quite the radical change that Rishi Sunak has presented as, but it is clearly an improvement on what we’ve had before; I think in practical terms a significant improvement. And the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in Northern Ireland is, I suspect, not a topic that is raised very frequently on the doorsteps of red wall constituencies. So they don’t wanna have this fight for all sorts of reasons. And as a consequence, I think this is going much better for Rishi Sunak than he could possibly have hoped for.

George Parker
And if it’s right that they don’t wanna have a fight and I agree with your analysis on this, that’s quite a big moment in terms of the whole Tory psychodrama over Europe. And it’s not just on the Northern Ireland protocol. That could extend to other things, couldn’t it, on the Horizon. For example, the government’s controversial plan to scrap all EU laws by the end of the year.

David Gauke
Yes, I think that’s right, yeah. Is there a sort of bit of a sense that the fight has gone out of them? There are no electoral rewards for Brexit purity and they will have all seen the opinion polls that show that there’s quite a lot of regret over Brexit and a strategy of reminding everybody that the Conservative party essentially became the Brexit party isn’t gonna be a sure-fire vote winner, and that applies, as you say, in other contexts as well. You know, the retained EU law bill is gonna run into huge problems in the House of Lords and the question is what happens next after that. But it’s a bad piece of legislation and I’m sure the prime minister, if he had a free hand, would find an excuse for dropping it. And yeah, there’s a momentum shift here and I think there’s a bit of a Brexit truce. I don’t think it will last forever. I think the Conservative party and opposition will probably become a bit more Brexity. That’s just how it would react to electoral defeat, assuming that that happens. And I do think for the first time in a long time, the voices calling for a closer relationship with the European Union are starting to become more powerful than those calling for a more distant relationship.

George Parker
And Jasmine, Boris Johnson spoke at a so-called British soft power conference in London this week. I think at the conference there was a show of hands on whether people thought Brexit was a good idea and not many hands went up, it has to be said. Boris Johnson said he didn’t think he could support the Northern Ireland protocol deal. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s gonna vote against it, does it? What did you make of his comments?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
It was quite an interesting intervention from Johnson today, and I think there have been a lot of eyes on Johnson to see how he would react to this. Bear in mind that so much of his political brand has been built around the idea of Brexit and taking back control. He campaigned for the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum. He put his 2019 general election pitch on this notion of getting Brexit done. There was certainly a lot of focus on how he was going to react to this, and he put forward a slightly nuanced position where he argued that he would certainly find it difficult to vote for Sunak’s deal, and he argued that it didn’t adhere to the notion of the UK taking back control and he brought up concerns about sovereignty. But then there was also a concession on his side that the Conservatives more broadly have struggled to articulate the case for Brexit post 2016, and he said that there were unforeseen challenges that weren’t anticipated on his side so that you could tell he couldn’t quite bring himself to support Sunak. But I think there was a general acceptance that actually several years down the line many people are questioning whether Brexit was a good idea, what benefits is actually brought about. And so it was an interesting intervention on his part. Just touching on David’s point, I do agree that there is a sense of weariness within the Conservative party at the moment on a whole range of issues, and I think there is a real recognition among Tory MPs, as I speak to you, that there wasn’t going to be another Tory leadership contest. Rishi Sunak is the leader that they’re going to have going into the next general election. So there is a questioning of what purpose is served by trying to chip away at his leadership, trying to make the Conservative party look weak and inward looking. And there is a sort of feeling on a lot of topics of just needing to rally behind Rishi Sunak and hopefully secure something that resembles a respectable result in the general election. But I think Johnson is always going to be making these interventions and it’s not going to be the last time he is sniping from the sidelines and suddenly criticising Sunak’s actions in government.

George Parker
Dave, what do you think Boris Johnson is gonna do on this?

David Gauke
What’s pretty clear is that Boris Johnson’s appetite to be prime minister is not sated. You know, it’s pretty clear he’s been on manoeuvres, he’s supposedly encouraging the DUP not to agree to this deal. You know, he’s been pretty destructive force, I think, and it hasn’t worked. But look, in a way, he’s lost one of his best weapons. And clearly there was a moment of danger for Sunak over the Northern Ireland protocol. And he’s got through it. And I think partly he’s got through it, it’s the sort of divide appear to be about tactics. And the Boris Johnson argument was you know how you get the best out of the EU if you play hardball with them. And that’s why you’ve got to have the Northern Ireland protocol bill on the table and threatened to act unilaterally, etc, etc. And Rishi Sunak took an entirely different approach. He pulls the bill, turned down the rhetoric. He was sort of practical, pragmatic, develops from trust and achieve far more in the last few weeks than Boris Johnson did over a number of years. And so Johnson is going to lost that particular battle, but he hasn’t given up. I agree with Jasmine’s point. I don’t think that’s the mood of Conservative MPs that they want to change leader, but there’s still a long way behind in the opinion polls. Labour victory looks very likely. They are probably gonna have bad local election results in May and the economy might not turn a corner necessarily in 2024. And I’m sure Boris Johnson is still thinking there is hope.

George Parker
Do you think he’d fancying Tory leader after an election defeat?

David Gauke
Well, one challenge with that is I think he’d have to move constituency because if the Conservatives lose the next election, they probably lose Uxbridge. People will say the leader of the opposition might not see him, might find that frustrating. On the other hand, I mean, opposition leaders struggle to cut through. Keir Starmer did for a number of years. Boris Johnson won’t have a problem in doing that. And well, look, you know, Winston Churchill was leader of the opposition for six years. Maybe Boris Johnson will wear it as well. I think there’s a certain money question as well. Could he continue to write books and do speeches for which he is paid separately whilst being leader of the opposition? That’s not customarily what leaders of the opposition do. But Boris Johnson wouldn’t be a conventional.

George Parker
Doesn’t always play by the rules.

David Gauke
Doesn’t play by his rules.

George Parker
Exactly. So Jasmine, what’s next for Rishi Sunak? This has been a unadulterated good week. I think most people would agree for Rishi Sunak, but there are plenty of problems lying ahead, aren’t there?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
Yes, I think a big issue that is really concerning a lot of Conservative MPs at the moment is the issue of migration and the issue of small boats crossing the English Channel. Now, obviously Sunak has made some advances in that area and you have partnership with France. He seems to have a good working relationship with President Macron. That’s high up on his agenda. But I think there’s a real feeling among Conservative MPs that an inability to at least appear like you’re getting to grips with this issue is certainly not going to go down well with the public. And actually talking to MPs, there’s a lot of worry about these hotels that are being used to house vulnerable migrants, there’s concerns about funding, there’s concerns about pressure on local resources. It’s a constituency issue that’s been multiplied all around the country that actually there isn’t a single Tory MP that hasn’t really brought up to me in recent weeks. What has been quite striking is that Brexit hasn’t really come up at all, and that’s I’ve actually ask people about it. People are much more concerned about migration, much more concerned about the economy. And I think the next challenge for Sunak is going to be these local elections, regardless of what the polls are saying, this is gonna be a real test of what the public think of Rishi Sunak and the Conservative party. And certainly we know that Labour are several points ahead, but it will be interesting to see how that actually plays out in the elections on polling day.

George Parker
And David, finally to you, there’s been a Tory away day, MPs down in Windsor, I’m sure you remember going to some of those. We have put your smart casuals on about some travelodge out in the countryside. Isaac Levido, the Tory election strategist, has been briefing people on what he calls this narrow path to a Tory victory. Can Rishi Sunak do it?

David Gauke
I think it’s highly unlikely something pretty unexpected would have to happen. He’s had a good week, as you say, and there’s the question’s whether that might change the narrative. A week or so ago, you were saying, well, he’s not really good at politics and what’s actually being achieved, and he’s a technocrat in office. But what’s the point of that? There’s a little bit of a mood shift. But look, the economy is still gonna be a big problem. Perhaps the Conservative party look more likely to hold together, that was the case a week ago. So he can take some encouragement from that. But you know, a government that’s been in power for a very long time and a difficult economic backdrop, and the leader of the opposition, who I don’t think particularly excites the nation but isn’t scaring it, I don’t think the Conservatives are heading towards annihilation. But it’s a very difficult set of circumstances in which to win. But at least Rishi Sunak looks as if he’s capable of delivering some competent government, and that’s clearly a big step forward.

George Parker
David Gauke and Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe, thanks for joining us. And that’s it for this episode of Payne’s Politics. If you like the podcast, we’d recommend subscribing. You can find us through all the usual channels to receive episodes as soon as they’re released. And we also appreciate positive reviews and ratings. Payne’s politics was presented by me, George Parker, and produced by Anna Dedhar and Manuela Saragosa. Sound engineer is Breen Turner. Until next time. Thanks for listening.

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