Exclusive GB News report by Keith Bays
Rishi Sunak's new EU deal was accused of being worse than Boris Johnson's Northern Ireland Protocol today as the revolt from Brexiteers grew.
Tory backbenchers warned the Prime Minister's agreement was "practically useless" while one senior DUP MP told GB News the pact should be dubbed the "Windsor Fake".
The Windsor framework aims to lessen the friction of trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Under the new deal proposed, goods from Great Britain heading to Northern Ireland will pass through a new ‘green lane’ with a different ‘red lane’ for goods that have a possibility of moving to the Republic of Ireland which is part of the EU.
Sammy Wilson said the DUP would not 'roll over' even if it caused a delay to the return of power-sharing at Stormont.PAThe Democratic Unionist Party has stated its intention to vote against the Stormont brake in Wednesday’s House of Commons vote.
DUP MP Sammy Wilson today told GB News: “Although it’s called the Stormont break it’s more like the Stormont fake, because it only fakes the influence that Northern Ireland would have on the imposition of EU law.”
Wilson added: “The deal isn’t any different to the current deal, if anything it’s a bit worse than the existing protocol because in many ways in entrenches the EU’s position in Northern Ireland in respect of EU law in Northern Ireland, it doesn’t give the government the opportunity it would have had under the exiting protocol to act unilaterally as there’s no such clause in the Windsor framework.”
Mr Wilson urged Prime Minister Sunak to think again, suggesting that the deal does not return sovereignty to the United Kingdom, does not get Brexit done.
Wilson said: “If there’s a substantial number of Conservatives that vote against the deal on Wednesday it means that the Prime Minister has still got a group of people within his own party who don’t believe that Brexit has been done, and who don’t believe that sovereignty has been returned to the United Kingdom.”
Asked about Keir Starmer’s Labour Party supporting the government in potentially ramming the deal through Parliament, Wilson said “There may be some short-term advantage for the Labour Party in embarrassing the government if the government requires their support to get this through, but do they really want to be supporting a Conservative government and how do they explain this to their voters.”
Wilson went on to say, “Especially how do Labour explain to voters that defected from them in the first place because of the influence that the EU had on the United Kingdom, that they are now helping the government to get a deal through the House of Commons which cements EU influence on the United Kingdom.”
This reaction comes after ERG Chairman Mark Francois provided a summary of the Star Chambers Initial findings today which although appear to be a damming inditement of the Sunak administration’s efforts, he refused to be drawn on which way the Eurosceptic group would vote in the House of Commons on Wednesday. In a statement, Francois said: “The star chamber’s principal findings are: That EU law will still be supreme in Northern Ireland; the rights of its people under the 1800 Act of Union are not restored; the green lane is not really a green lane at all; the Stormont brake is practically useless and the framework itself has no exit, other than through a highly complex legal process.”
All eyes will turn to the vote in the commons tomorrow, in what promises to be one of the most important of Sunak’s premiership.
