Is Rishi Sunak in deep Brexit trouble?

The Prime Minister claimed he’d removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea – but the reality of his deal couldn’t be more different

Former prime ministers – still able to command an audience while unburdened by the responsibility of running the country – have proven to be nothing but trouble for their successors in recent years, particularly in matters relating to Brexit. Sir John Major and Sir Tony Blair played Mordred to Boris Johnson’s Arthur during his time in Downing Street. Now it is Johnson’s turn to antagonise, and he’s doing it with gusto.

Speaking at a conference in London this week, Johnson gave his verdict on the Windsor Framework, declaring that he would “find it very difficult to vote” for it. “This is the EU graciously unbending to allow us to do what we want in our own country, not by our laws but by theirs.” And that is so obviously where Rishi Sunak’s deal fails the sovereignty test.

What the Windsor Framework achieves is to extract a promise of a dispensation from the EU to change its laws to allow us a greater degree of independence to legislate in our own country than the original Protocol did.

What the deal does not secure is a right for the UK government to do the same thing. Any newly acquired power we now have is conditional on the EU being willing to play the role of a benevolent sovereign, and so it will be in their gift to take it back if we fail to fall in line.

What does that tell us about the likelihood of the much celebrated “Stormont Brake” ever being activated? How likely are we to diverge from EU law in any meaningful way under these circumstances?

It is one thing for a politician to oversell an agreement as he presents it to his electorate – indeed Sunak could legitimately laugh at the suggestion that Johnson might be in any position to lecture him on the morality of it.

But what can prove fatal to a political career is taking the overselling a bit too far and misleading Parliament.

In his plucky speech in the House of Commons on Monday, the Prime Minister claimed that the Windsor Framework “removed” the border in the Irish Sea, saying that it “removed any sense of a border for UK internal trade”. Mr Sunak appeared to have had a lucky escape, with his claim going unchallenged. Because the EU has a rather different take on the agreement.

On the movement of agri-food retail goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the EU documents only talk about “drastically reduced” checks, stating “physical checks to be carried out on a risk basis and intelligence-led approach”.

The EU promises “an unprecedented reduction, although not a full eradication, of customs requirements for traders moving goods by direct transport from Great Britain to Northern Ireland” for goods not entering the EU. And even that dispensation is conditional on traders registering and being authorised as “trusted traders”.

In the political context of protecting the integrity of the UK’S internal market and securing the DUP’S support for the Windsor Agreement, the difference between no border in the Irish Sea and drastically reduced customs requirements is surely immense, and the Prime Minister must know this. Did he then mislead his colleagues in Parliament by characterising his deal as something it demonstrably isn’t, or is it the EU which is being economical with the truth?

Sir William Cash, the chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, has called on Mr Sunak to give evidence on the Windsor Framework on March 14. The veteran MP and his committee will no doubt get to the bottom of the matter.

But in the meantime, for the country’s sake, let us hope Brexit doesn’t claim yet another prime ministerial scalp.