Sunak's EU Deal Passes With Minor Rebellion

Agreement overwhelmingly backed despite prominent Tories opposing.

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Stuart Mitchell/@IncMonocle

Those Brexiteers who rushed out to endorse the ‘Windsor Framework’ agreed by Rishi Sunak’s Government and the EU have been left looking increasingly naive.

The ERG’s Legal Advisor Committee Assessment laid out the reality. Their exposed how:

“Northern Ireland remains subject to the power and control of EU law, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) and EU administrative organs (such as the European Commission) in respect of goods and ancillary matters.”

In addition to that:

“Claims in the UK Command Paper that the Windsor deal will lead to EU laws being ‘disapplied’ or ‘removed’ from Northern Ireland are not correct.”

And that:

“A new 'Stormont brake' is to be inserted into the NI Protocol which gives a certain number of members of the NI Assembly the ability to call for the rejection of incoming EU laws.

“However, this only applies to future changes to EU law and confers no right to change any part of the existing body of EU laws imposed on Northern Ireland under the NI Protocol. The 'brake' is of very narrow application in theory and is likely to be useless in practice.”

The fact alone that both former Tory Leaders and PMs, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, voted against it shows that the Conservative Government has drifted away from previous principles on this.

Now far away from being the election-winning coalition backed by Brexiteers nationwide in 2019, the Government have gone soft.

Instead of triggering Article 16 long ago or using the Protocol Bill to make unilateral changes, they’ve gone for this new Deal.

Johnson and Truss both opposing this Brexit move from the Government is likely to further agitate Tory grassroots members cut out of the latest leadership decision.

The ERG group of Brexiteer Conservative MPs also advocated voting against the Deal, as did the DUP.

Euro Guido @EuroGuido

ERG Recommends Voting Against Windsor Framework order-order.com/2023/03/22/erg…

Of course there was little prospect of this being blocked because Labour committed to backing pretty much whatever Sunak and Brussels agreed on. The vote did include a Conservative rebellion - though fairly small.