Suella Braverman will feel that 'the government has let down the Red Wall voters'

“Let's not forget that Suella Braverman coming out and supporting Rishi Sunak really made the difference at that time. It was absolutely crucial.

“I'm most interested in the fact that she had, and I'm not surprised at this, got a commitment from Rishi Sunak to look at the protocol, to change things in the protocol and to bring in the protocol bill.

“That was very, very important; she was one of the few senior conservatives who actually opposed the protocol and has been very strong on this.

“I think that bit to me and to people in Northern Ireland is just another example of how I'm afraid, the Prime Minister has sold out part of the United Kingdom.

“David Cameron, don't forget, led the staying in campaign. The Prime Minister, although he always says that he was a leaver, we never actually saw him on the campaign trail, and he hasn't taken advantage of what could have happened after we left.

“But more importantly, he seems to be almost blocking things that would show that we really were moving on.

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“He's seeing the Windsor Framework, as it is now called, as one of his great attributes and one of the great things he's achieved when actually, week by week we get Statutory Instruments here in the House of lords, which actually drive Northern Ireland further and further away.

“For me, the saddest thing is that all those people in the red wall seats who came out and voted to leave and then saw that they were actually going to be able to get that delivered have been let down very badly.

“I think Suella Braverman feels that strongly and knows that and that's why she put into one of her four tests before she supported Rishi Sunak was to deal with the protocol, and that hasn’t happened.

“Don't underestimate the Conservative party when it's under attack like this. People will begin to coalesce and unite and there will be a lot of opposition to what Suella Braverman’s said and she will be ostracised and condemned.

“But out there, in the grassroots, there will be a lot of people who think she’s speaking for them.

“I expect we'll see the details of that; I imagined at some stage may well want to publish that, which will cause even more damning, in a sense, because it's not just her having a drink or a cup of coffee with Rishi Sunak and saying, ‘I’ll support you if you agree to these things’.

“If it was formally written down, it meant that she was very serious about it and he was serious about it, if he supposedly signed up to it.

“If he signed up to it, now he has shown that he has reneged on it, so it's very, very important. I think what it does do is actually made it very, very unlikely that there will be any form of restoring Stormont in Northern Ireland now when Rishi Sunak seems to have gone back on his promises.”