LONDON — Rishi Sunak began an outreach effort to win support from Conservative rebels for a post-Brexit deal on Northern Ireland after weeks of talks with the European Union.
The U.K. prime minister held one-on-one meetings with Tory members of Parliament on Monday afternoon in which he explained the outline of a prospective agreement with the bloc, people familiar with the conversations said. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly is set to address Tory rank-and-file MPs on Tuesday to brief them on the latest negotiations, another person familiar said.
Sunak is trying to draw a line under an issue that’s poisoned relations with the EU since Britain left the bloc three years ago: the nature of Northern Ireland’s trading arrangements with Great Britain, after the region was allowed to remain in the bloc’s single market.
The discussions with Conservative backbenchers suggest further progress has been made toward the unveiling of a long-awaited deal. But while government officials had penciled in Tuesday as a possible date for that announcement — with Sunak expected to brief Cabinet ministers at their regular meeting in the morning — that timetable now looks likely to slip, people close to the talks said. Sunak's office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moreover, if an announcement isn’t made by Thursday, it’s possible it could slip into next week. That’s in part due to ministers in London and Brussels being tied up with events marking one year since the invasion of Ukraine at the end of this week.
Flurry of Diplomacy
A flurry of diplomatic activity kicked off on Thursday when Sunak flew to Belfast for meetings with Northern Irish parties that evening and the following day. The British premier then held further talks with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Munich on Saturday.
And on Monday, Cleverly spoke again with European Commission Vice President Maros Sefcovic, after doing so on Friday. The two men were joined on Monday’s video conference call by Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris. Sefcovic said he and Cleverly had agreed to meet again “later this week.”
The prospect for a deal that would seek to end years of post-Brexit acrimony represents the toughest political test of Sunak’s premiership so far, as he risks a stand-off with Northern Ireland unionists and members of his own party.
The prime minister is seeking to reset relations with the EU, the U.K.’s biggest trading partner, by dialing down the confrontational tone adopted by his two immediate predecessors, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, in their attempts to resolve the post-Brexit impasse in Northern Ireland.
DUP’s Stance
Perhaps the premier’s biggest challenge is to persuade the Democratic Unionist Party to drop its veto on the formation of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing executive, which it has blocked for more than a year in protest at the so-called protocol, the portion of the Brexit deal governing the region’s unique place in the EU and U.K.’s trading markets. The DUP has set seven tests for any new deal to meet.
There was a glimmer of hope last week when DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson emerged from a meeting with Sunak saying progress had been made. But on Monday, Sammy Wilson, the DUP chief whip who’s in charge of party management, told Sky that there remain “barriers and hills to climb.”
The DUP position has been closely aligned to that of hard-line Brexiteers on the right of Sunak’s own Conservative Party, and over the weekend, his approach to his own MPs switched course. Having kept even most ministers in the dark about the status of a deal so far, government whips began contacting MPs on Saturday for their views on the shape of a final agreement. They echoed Sunak’s words at the Munich Security Conference, telling MPs that progress had been made but more work was required.
That sparked the revival of old Brexit debates in WhatsApp group chats of Tory MPs over the weekend, with the role of the European Court of Justice in Northern Ireland at the forefront of their minds.
Sunak’s spokesman, Max Blain, told reporters on Monday that “intensive work” will be carried out in the coming days to reach a resolution. There is no specific deadline for talks to conclude, Blain said.
