The Government has refused to renegotiate Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal with the EU in a blow to the DUP, which is campaigning to change the Windsor Framework in elections in Northern Ireland.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has urged voters to back the DUP in Thursday’s council elections to force the Prime Minister back to the negotiating room.
But James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, said the Government had no intention of making any fundamental changes to February’s deal on post-Brexit struck trading arrangements.
“It’s a very simple answer,” Mr Cleverly told the Lords Committee on Northern Ireland on Tuesday, “which is no.”
Lord Empey asked Mr Cleverly if the Government planned domestic legislation that would guarantee Northern Ireland’s place in the UK, which is another DUP demand. “I can’t see we need to,” Mr Cleverly told the former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.
The Foreign Secretary said the Windsor Framework protected Northern Ireland’s place in the UK. He said the deal was the “best possible” that could be sold by the European Commission to EU capitals. Reopening talks with the EU would risk those capitals demanding some of the European concessions be taken back off the table, he added.
“The reason why I said no to renegotiation is because we got movement from the Commission that for many, many years, the Commission told us was impossible,” he said. “The idea that somehow there was a significantly or even subtly better deal just over the horizon. I think that’s wrong.”
Voters head to the polls on Thursday for elections that have become a de facto referendum on the DUP’s 15-month boycott of Stormont over the Irish Sea border. The unionists are not satisfied with the Windsor Framework, which they say does not go far enough to protect their place in the UK.
Sir Jeffrey has urged voters to give the DUP the “strength” at the ballot box to secure “what we need to ensure Northern Ireland’s place within the UK is fully and properly restored”.
Biggest party in the province
Defeat in the elections will be a huge blow to the DUP, which lost its status as Northern Ireland’s biggest political party to Sinn Fein for the first time in the Stormont elections in May last year.
Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill, who is now targeting replacing the DUP as the largest party of local government, has told exasperated voters to send the DUP “a signal” to end its boycott, which has delayed action on the cost of living crisis and NHS.
In London, Mr Cleverly defended UK plans for British milk, dairy, fish and vegetables to carry a “not for EU” label, even though Britain does not share a land border with the EU.
He said it was “logical” to ask the rest of the UK to do the same as Northern Ireland, which does have a land border with EU member Ireland. He said that the Stormont Brake, a new mechanism to allow Northern Ireland Assembly members to pause EU laws applying in the region, was “an insurance policy”.
He added that he hoped it would never need to be used and that any issues could be sorted out between the EU and UK before the brake was needed.
Mr Cleverly also rejected suggestions that the UK and EU made differing claims over the Windsor Framework and what it does.
“On the substantive elements of the agreement, we are absolutely as one,” he told peers.
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