Rishi Sunak lost last summer’s Conservative Party leadership election to Liz Truss, having played a part in the defenestration of her predecessor, Boris Johnson. When she failed, he replaced her, without the election going to the Party membership stage.
So he can’t claim a mandate either from them or from the British public. This would be a problem for him at the best of times – even were he not the fifth Tory leader in less than ten years, near what currently feels like the end of a long cycle of government, leading a country feeling the combined impact of the financial crash, Covid, the Ukraine war, and Brexit.
The Prime Minister knows these limits well. His response has been to focus on five priorities, the majority of which are economic, and avoid anything that might either distract from them or weaken his position further.
Channel Four privatisation? Drop it. Online Safety Bill? Tone it down. Trans conversion therapy? Avoid a revolt. Housing targets? The same. Onshore wind? Ditto. After all, the Conservatives are 22 points behind in the polls, and local elections are less than three months way.
Do nothing to stir a Parliamentary Party factionalised by the nature of politics, recent experience and its own peril. Above all, offer no opportunity to that master of it, Johnson, or do anything that might provoke letters to Graham Brady.
Why, then, is Sunak doing so, over an issue as remote from most voters as the Northern Ireland Protocol? For the more he fiddles with this Pandora’s Box, the more he risks a host of harms flying out from it to ravage him: the Democratic Unionist Party, the European Research Group, Truss…and Johnson himself.
Government sources offer the following answers. The absence of devolved government risks destablising Northern Ireland – so the Protocol problem must be cracked to allow the DUP’s return.
Furthermore, the status quo is not an option. The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill awaits Third Reading in the Lords, and a decision about its future must be made one way or the other. And the problems with the Protocol itself are far bigger: it works for neither the Government, Northern Ireland or the EU, as Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s Taoiseach at the time of its negotiation, has conceded.
Some of those sources go on to claim that Brexit, currently a net electoral negative for the Government, must be turned into a net voter plus, and that fixing the Protocol is essential if UK-EU trade is to flow more fully and the economy recover faster.
Others point back to the Truss government and sanctions threats if parts of the Bill, which would allow the Protocol to be over-ridden, are triggered by her successor if it becomes law, or even if it passes on to the statute book. They cite the possibility of such sanctions being specifically targeted at the constituencies of ERG members.
For after all, the Protocol has never been fully implemented, and the view of these sources is that the EU isn’t permanently prepared to let the current grace periods and diplomatic stand-off roll on indefinitely.
To say that a fixed Protocol would be better than resumed hostilities is a statement of the obvious. But how likely is this shimmering prospect – whereby Sunak, having helped to win a first victory for the Union by playing a part in the fall of Nicola Sturgeon, is able to gain a second by calming the Protocol’s troubled waters?
For Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP’s leader, will be looking over his shoulder at his parliamentary colleagues. They, in turn, will be looking over theirs at their party’s activists.
All will remember the fall of David Trimble, brought down by unionists who claimed he had been captured by the Union’s enemies. No wonder the DUP has set seven conditions for any Protocol settlement which constitute a high bar for Sunak to clear.
These include “no checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain or from Great Britain to Northern Ireland”. There is room for a thousand quibbles about what particular checks will apply to which goods for what claimed destination.
The ERG’s gaze is focused less on trade details than the European Court. It may not be named in the DUP’s conditions, but its role preoccupies Mark Francois and his colleagues. Under the terms of the UK-EU trade agreement, the Court has no role in settling disputes.
It’s far from clear that the ERG is willing to accept any other role for the Court – including binding rulings in relation to the EU’s own law in the event of disputes.
Some claim that the ERG isn’t the force it was, and that some of its most senior former figures, such as Suella Braverman and Steve Baker, are now Government Ministers. But senior ERG members report that they haven’t seen the legal text of any proposed Protocol deal.
Nor, apparently, has Donaldson – one of the reasons why he will have been unwilling to give the Prime Minister carte blanche when they met in Belfast last week.
Are those former ERG members now in government fully in the loop? Is Sunak’s plan resignation-proof? What happens if the DUP refuses to go back into government? Would the Prime Minister simply press on and, if so, what does he think would be the point?
Above all, what happens if Truss and Johnson get to their feet in the Commons, on the day of a Prime Ministerial statement, and denounce any deal as – not to put too fine a point on it – a sell out? And urge the completion of the Protocol Bill.
How does that interplay with restive Party activists, looming local elections, tensions as MP selections and reselections mount, the Budget, small boats – and the legacy of regicide, legitimacy and insurrection I describe above? It seems that a new Protocol deal wouldn’t require a Commons vote.
But a means can doubtless be found, assuming that the Government doesn’t spring one itself for its own purposes. Does Sunak really want to risk reliance on Keir Starmer in the lobbies?
It may be unfair, first, to suggest that the Prime Minister may not be a politician only to quibble when he tries to act like a statesman. Cracking the problem of the Protocol is a noble quest. And Sunak will not need me to point out that the Protocol’s biggest critics, the ERG, mostly voted for it. And that Johnson himself built the house he now says should be demolished.
Nonetheless, is there not an alternative – which, though offering smaller gains also poses fewer risks? After all, Michael Gove and Maroš Šefčovič found ways of kicking the Protocol can down the road in 2021.
Is it really impossible for Sunak to say to his counterparts, in the terms that politicians reserve for each other in private. “Look, my friends – I’m in a bind here. Of course I want the Protocol settled. Of course I want our relationship with Europe eased. Is not Britain playing its part in Ukraine, working for our collective security?”
“The election’s only 18 months away, maybe less. We’ve already strung everything out for a couple of years. Just give me a bit more time.” In this vision of things, the Bill is passed but its provisions not enacted.
A few technical tweaks to the Protocol are made – and life goes on. Bad for Northern Ireland? Yes, though perhaps less so than the alternative. Inglorious? Certainly. Humiliating? Possibly. Maybe Sunak would thereby miss a triumph. But he would certainly lessen risk. Better a live mouse than a dead lion?