Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal “does not cut the mustard” and is likely to be rejected by the Democratic Unionist Party, one of the party’s MPs has declared.
Ian Paisley said his “gut instinct” was that the “Windsor Framework” agreed yesterday by the prime minister and European Commission preside Ursula von der Leyen failed to meet the seven tests the DUP had set for it.
His comments are a blow for Sunak, who needs the DUP’s support to win over Brexiteer Tory MPs.
The prime minister says his new deal removes the customs border in the Irish Sea and gives the Northern Ireland Assembly an effective veto on new EU laws being imposed there.
But speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight, Paisley said: “My gut instinct is it doesn’t cut the mustard.”
The North Antrim MP also took issue with Sunak’s decision to dump the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which would have given the government the power to unilaterally rip up parts of the original Brexit deal struck by Boris Johnson when he was PM.
Paisley said: “We’re not there, and the government certainly has made an effort, but they had something called leverage down there in the House of Lords.
“They were able with the Protocol Bill to do things and to bring Europe to this point, but they should’ve kept pushing them and got them right over the line on these issues, but they’ve now withdrawn their only piece of leverage and they’ve fallen, in my view, short on a number of key points.”
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson this morning said his party will take time to study the details of the deal before making a definitive statement on it.
He the agreement “goes some way” to addressing their concerns, but that some issued remained.
“We’re reasonable people but we want to ensure that what the Prime Minister has said is matched by what is actually in the agreement itself, can it deliver on the areas of concern that we set out in our seven tests?” Donaldson said.