Brexit: Breakup of UK ‘at stake’ if Northern Ireland Protocol deal isn’t reached
The breakup of the UK is “at stake” if a new deal on post-Brexit trading arrangements in Northern Ireland is not reached, a senior DUP politician warned.
Sammy Wilson MP said his party will continue with its protest at Stormont if EU rules aren’t removed in the region – saying this threatens Northern Ireland’s place in the union.
This has been a key sticking point for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is battling to reach a new settlement with Brussels to fix issues with the controversial Northern Ireland Protocol.
The mechanism was agreed as part of the Brexit deal to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland – which all parties agreed was necessary to preserve peace.
But because the Republic is in the EU, it means traders in Northern Ireland have to comply with single market rules, creating friction on the flow of goods between the region and the rest of the UK.
Mr Wilson told Sky News the DUP wants Northern Ireland to be “treated in the exactly the same way as the rest of the United Kingdom. In other words, that the laws which apply in Northern Ireland are UK laws, not EU laws”.
He added: “Essentially if a deal is agreed which still keeps us within the EU Single Market, as ministers in the Northern Ireland Assembly we would be required by law to implement that deal.
“And we’re not going to do that because we believe that such an arrangement is designed to take us out of the United Kingdom and indeed would take us out of the United Kingdom, because increasingly we would have to agree EU laws which diverge from UK laws and in doing so would separate our own country from the rest of the United Kingdom.”
Read More:
What is the protocol and why does it matter?
What is the Brexit deal being discussed between UK and EU and will it be backed in Northern Ireland?
Mr Wilson said the prime minister has a choice whether to “protect the union or the European Union”.
“It’s unreasonable to ask unionists to participate in an arrangement which is designed for the break-up of the union, and that’s what’s at stake here. And that’s why this is a historic moment for the prime minister,” he said.
Asked if he thought there would be a deal this week, as reports have suggested, he said: “No I don’t. He (Mr Sunak) realises that there are barriers and hills to climb. He knows the kind of issues that have to be dealt with. I hope he does go into negotiations with a full understanding of what is required.”
No ‘final deal’ yet
The NI Protocol has effectively created a customs border in the Irish Sea
Downing Street has kept quiet about the details of what could be in the new deal.
On Monday, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said negotiations were continuing to resolve the outstanding issues and “you will hear our position should a deal be agreed”.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris and the European Commission’s Maros Sefcovic will hold talks by video link on Monday afternoon.
The PM’s spokesman insisted there was not yet a “final deal” – and refused to say whether MPs will get to vote on it should there be one.
It comes amid mounting concerns a Tory civil war will stop an agreement getting over the line.
Pressure mounts on Sunak
Veteran Tory Eurosceptic Sir Bernard Jenkin said that any deal which did not lead to a return to powersharing at the Stormont Assembly by the DUP – which walked out in protest at the protocol early last year – would be “completely disastrous”.
However, ex-justice secretary and Brexit critic David Gauke said the DUP “cannot accept any realistically negotiable outcome and nor can some Tory MPs because they’re purists or opportunists”.
“He has to do a deal without them,” he tweeted.
It is understood Mr Sunak’s officials held talks with their Brussels counterparts on Sunday on how to give local politicians a greater say in the application of EU law in the region, addressing what unionists call the “democratic deficit”.
While it is thought the EU and UK are close to signing off a deal that would reduce protocol red tape on the movement of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, there is no expectation that Brussels is willing to agree to end the application of EU law in the region.
The EU contends that a fundamental part of the protocol – namely that Northern Ireland traders can sell freely into the European single market – is dependent on the operation of EU rules in the region.
Pressure on Mr Sunak is mounting after his predecessor-but-one made a weekend intervention calling for him to take a tougher line with the EU.
A source close to Mr Johnson said his view was that “it would be a great mistake to drop the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill” – which would empower the UK to scrap parts of the treaty without the EU’s permission.
A senior government official indicated that a successful outcome of the negotiations would mean the controversial legislation – tabled at Westminster under Mr Johnson’s leadership but paused when Mr Sunak entered No 10 – would no longer be needed.
Read More:
Cabinet minister says Boris Johnson intervention ‘not entirely unhelpful’
Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is ‘illegal and unrealistic’, EU envoy warns
But some Tories quickly sided with the former prime minister, with Conservative former cabinet minister Simon Clarke and Lord Frost – who negotiated Mr Johnson’s original Brexit deal – urging the government to push ahead with the protocol bill.
Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt also said Mr Johnson’s warning was “not entirely unhelpful”, while Home Secretary Suella Braverman said on Monday that the legislation was “one of the biggest tools” at the government’s disposal for “solving” the issues in the Irish Sea.
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Boris Johnson is bitterly opposed to Rishi Sunak’s plans to abandon the NI Protocol Bill
Labour will vote with government on protocol
On Monday Sir Keir Starmer repeated that the opposition would back the government to get any deal through.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to Thurrock in Essex, the Labour leader said: “There is a window of opportunity to move forward…the question now is whether the prime minister is strong enough to get it through his own backbenches.
“What I have said on Northern Ireland, the national interest comes first. So we will put party politics to one side. We will vote with the government and so the prime minister doesn’t have to rely on his backbenches.”
The Donald Trump peace plan is nothing of the sort. It takes Russian demands and presents them as peace proposals, in what is effectively for Ukraine a surrender ultimatum.
If accepted, it would reward armed aggression. The principle, sacrosanct since the Second World War, for obvious and very good reasons, that even de facto borders cannot be changed by force, will have been trampled on at the behest of the leader of the free world.
The Kremlin will have imposed terms via negotiators on a country it has violated, and whose people its troops have butchered, massacred and raped. It is without doubt the biggest crisis in Trans-Atlantic relations since the war began, if not since the inception of NATO.
The question now is: are Europe’s leaders up to meeting the daunting challenges that will follow. On past form, we cannot be sure.
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia. Pic: Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov via Reuters
The plan proposes the following:
• Land seized by Vladimir Putin’s unwarranted and unprovoked invasion would be ceded by Kyiv.
• Territory his forces have fought but failed to take with colossal loss of life will be thrown into the bargain for good measure.
• Ukraine will be barred from NATO, from having long-range weapons, from hosting foreign troops, from allowing foreign diplomatic planes to land, and its military neutered, reduced in size by more than half.
Donald Trump meeting Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August, File pic: Reuters
And most worryingly for Western leaders, the plan proposes NATO and Russia negotiate with America acting as mediator.
Lest we forget, America is meant to be the strongest partner in NATO, not an outside arbitrator. In one clause, Mr Trump’s lack of commitment to the Western alliance is laid bare in chilling clarity.
And even for all that, the plan will not bring peace. Mr Putin has made it abundantly clear he wants all of Ukraine.
He has a proven track record of retiring, rallying his forces, then returning for more. Reward a bully as they say, and he will only come back for more. Why wouldn’t he, if he is handed the fortress cities of Donetsk and a clear run over open tank country to Kyiv in a few years?
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US draft Russia peace plan
Since the beginning of Trump’s presidency, Europe has tried to keep the maverick president onside when his true sympathies have repeatedly reverted to Moscow.
It has been a demeaning and sycophantic spectacle, NATO’s secretary general stooping even to calling the US president ‘Daddy’. And it hasn’t worked. It may have made matters worse.
A choir sing in front of an apartment building destroyed in a Russian missile strike in Ternopil, Ukraine. Pic: Reuters
The parade of world leaders trooping through Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, lavishing praise on his Gaza ceasefire plan, only encouraged him to believe he is capable of solving the world’s most complex conflicts with the minimum of effort.
The Gaza plan is mired in deepening difficulty, and it never came near addressing the underlying causes of the war.
Read more:
Ukraine war latest: Putin welcomes peace plan
Trump’s 28-point Ukraine peace plan in full
Most importantly, principles the West has held inviolable for eight decades cannot be torn up for the sake of a quick and uncertain peace.
With a partner as unreliable, the challenge to Europe cannot be clearer.
In the words of one former Baltic foreign minister: “There is a glaringly obvious message for Europe in the 28-point plan: This is the end of the end.
“We have been told repeatedly and unambiguously that Ukraine’s security, and therefore Europe’s security, will be Europe’s responsibility. And now it is. Entirely.”
If Europe does not step up to the plate and guarantee Ukraine’s security in the face of this American betrayal, we could all pay the consequences.
World
Ukraine and Europe cannot reject Trump’s plan – they will play for time and hope he can still be persuaded to desert the Kremlin
“Terrible”, “weird”, “peculiar” and “baffling” – some of the adjectives being levelled by observers at the Donald Trump administration’s peace plan for Ukraine.
The 28-point proposal was cooked up between Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff and Kremlin official Kirill Dmitriev without European and Ukrainian involvement.
It effectively dresses up Russian demands as a peace proposal. Demands first made by Russia at the high watermark of its invasion in 2022, before defeats forced it to retreat from much of Ukraine.
Ukraine war latest: Kyiv receives US peace plan
(l-r) Kirill Dmitriev and special envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg in April 2025. Pic: Kremlin Pool Photo/AP
Its proposals are non-starters for Ukrainians.
It would hand over the rest of Donbas, territory they have spent almost four years and lost tens of thousands of men defending.
Analysts estimate at the current rate of advance, it would take Russia four more years to take the land it is proposing simply to give them instead.
It proposes more than halving the size of the Ukrainian military and depriving them of some of their most effective long-range weapons.
And it would bar any foreign forces acting as peacekeepers in Ukraine after any peace deal is done.
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Is Moscow back in Washington’s good books?
The plan comes at an excruciating time for the Ukrainians.
They are being pounded with devastating drone attacks, killing dozens in the last few nights alone.
They are on the verge of losing a key stronghold city, Pokrovsk.
And Volodymyr Zelenskyy is embroiled in the gravest political crisis since the war began, with key officials facing damaging corruption allegations.
Read more from Sky News:
Witkoff’s ‘secret’ plan to end war
Navy could react to laser incident
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Ukrainian support for peace plan ‘very much in doubt’
The suspicion is Mr Witkoff and Mr Dmitriev conspired together to choose this moment to put even more pressure on the Ukrainian president.
Perversely, though, it may help him.
There has been universal condemnation and outrage in Kyiv at the Witkoff-Dmitriev plan. Rivals have little choice but to rally around the wartime Ukrainian leader as he faces such unreasonable demands.
The genesis of this plan is unclear.
Was it born from Donald Trump’s overinflated belief in his peacemaking abilities? His overrated Gaza ceasefire plan attracted lavish praise from world leaders, but now seems mired in deepening difficulty.
The fear is Mr Trump’s team are finding ways to allow him to walk away from this conflict altogether, blaming Ukrainian intransigence for the failure of his diplomacy.
Mr Trump has already ended financial support for Ukraine, acting as an arms dealer instead, selling weapons to Europe to pass on to the invaded democracy.
If he were to take away military intelligence support too, Ukraine would be blind to the kind of attacks that in recent days have killed scores of civilians.
Europe and Ukraine cannot reject the plan entirely and risk alienating Mr Trump.
They will play for time and hope against all the evidence he can still be persuaded to desert the Kremlin and put pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war, rather than force Ukraine to surrender instead.
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