Sunak Faces 100-Strong Backbench Rebellion Over NI Protocol Deal

Border checks on goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland have sparked unrest among unionist communities — but Republicans and the Dublin government insist they are needed to honor the Good Friday Agreement.

The British prime minister faces a major rebellion by Brexiteer MPs over his deal with the European Union (EU) on the Northern Ireland protocol.

Rishi Sunak was said to be close to reaching agreement with Dublin and Irish republican party Sinn Fein on Monday on the annexe to the UK withdrawal agreement which has kept the exclave in the EU's single market.

That has meant customs checks and even bans on goods transported from the UK mainland, prompting unrest among the loyalist community.

But former international trade minister James Duddridge warned that any deal which maintained European Court of Justice jurisdiction would be opposed not just by main unionist party the DUP but also by more than a hundred of his fellow backbenchers.

"It won’t just be the so-called ‘Spartans’," Duddridge said. "There will be a large number of Brexiters, possibly the majority of the parliamentary party, and potentially running into treble figures."

Over the weekend, a source close to Sunak's old boss Boris Johnson said the former PM, who led the Tories to a landslide victory in the 2019 snap general election on the promise to "get Brexit done," said he was against dropping legislation to alter the customs arrangements using the Article 16 clause written into the protocol. Brussels has claimed the bill is "illegal and unrealistic."

"His general thinking is that it would be a great mistake to drop the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill," the source said.

Fellow backbencher Simon Clarke, who briefly served as levelling-up secretary under Sunak's short-lived predecessor Liz Truss, backed Johnson's call to keep the protocol bill in play.

"It is absolutely imperative tactically to give our negotiators the strongest possible hand to play with Brussels. Also, the protocol legislation may well be the cleanest way to fix this problem," Clarke said. "If the perception is there that the bill is moribund then that will, I am afraid, weaken our hand very considerably."

Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt told media on Monday that Johnson's intervention was not "completely unhelpful."

"The prime minister will acknowledge that having the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill there, having the work that the former prime minister did, has helped us get where we are," Mordaunt said. "But it has always been our preference to try and have a negotiated settlement and that is what everyone is working to. There's still a lot to be done."

Republican parties and the Irish Fiana Fail-Fine Gael coalition government insist that the protocol is necessary to allow goods to move unchecked across the land border between Northern Ireland and the republic — insisting that a 'hard border' between the two would break the Belfast peace agreement, which was signed in 1998 and entered into force in 1999.