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Enemies are circling, Brexiteers are already pronouncing it dead, and the DUP are warning it undermines the Union.

But as opponents line up to try and assassinate Rishi Sunak’s forthcoming deal with Brussels to rework Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit future, Sky News can reveal that Number 10 is yet to play its trump card.

Despite weeks of headlines and column inches about the talks, Downing Street has so far kept under wraps what some believe is perhaps the biggest negotiation win.

Far from giving ground to the EU, they think they have turned the tables and forced a concession.

In short, Westminster will set VAT rates, taxation and state aid policy in Northern Ireland, not Brussels.

Politics latest: Tory MPs told to be in Westminster on Monday amid Brexit deal speculation

Mr Sunak has made addressing the disparity over VAT a priority ever since his last budget as chancellor, when Northern Ireland could not benefit from his decision to slash the tax on solar panels and other energy efficient purchases elsewhere in the UK because it must follow EU single market rules.

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Downing Street is unwilling to reveal any change is coming publicly, insisting that “intensive” negotiations are still under way, giving them nothing yet to announce.

However, Sky News understands that the concession by Brussels is likely to feature at the heart of the reform package.

DUP Leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson says progress has been made on the Northern Ireland protocol. In a statement to the press he said 'It's not a question of compromise, it is a question of the UK government honouring the commitments they've made to the people of Northern Ireland'.
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DUP Leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson

Some MPs have been alerted to the likely inclusion of this change, it is welcomed privately by senior DUP figures, and it is understood to be one of the three major changes at the heart of the Sunak deal with Brussels. The DUP’s only reservation is that they want to see the legal text to check the concession is as described.

It is not clear, however, whether it will be enough.

After months of official negotiations, what some see as basic errors – and an information vacuum – may have allowed too much of a head of steam to build up behind the opposition.

As a result, it is now unclear whether the changes hammered out with Brussels since December will ever be implemented.

Mr Sunak is facing splits amongst key allies over how and whether to proceed, with warnings that he’s not strong enough to face down his party and growing anxiety in Brussels that the first prime minister they have trusted since Brexit may be about to let them down.

The next few days could end up being the most consequential of his premiership.

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‘Collapse of Good Friday Agreement absolute catastrophe’

What is in the forthcoming deal?

The patchwork of measures and agreements to change the Northern Ireland Protocol have been prepared in utmost secrecy.

Taken together, those involved say it required the EU to change its negotiating mandate and agree to alter the text of the Protocol – something Brussels said was not possible during the premierships of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

Under the Sunak proposals, three key changes to that arrangement are likely to be agreed.

The first has been well trailed: businesses that have signed up to a “trusted trader scheme” will be allowed to avoid all checks when moving goods from the GB mainland to Northern Ireland.

In exchange, the EU will be able to access “real-time” UK data on trade flows across the Irish Sea. The handful of companies who are not signed up to the trusted trader scheme would have to continue labelling and filling in paperwork as at present.

The second – known as the “Stormont Lock”, first mentioned in The Sunday Times – is designed to go some way towards addressing concerns that Northern Ireland will remain subject to EU single market rules under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice as the price of avoiding border checks between the North and the Republic.

Read more:
What are the DUP’s seven tests for changes to the NI Protocol?

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (right) leaves the Culloden Hotel in Belfast, after holding talks with Stormont leaders over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Picture date: Friday February 17, 2023.
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Rishi Sunak leaves the Culloden Hotel in Belfast, after holding talks with Stormont leaders last week

It is very complicated, but essentially it will give Northern Ireland some of the rights also enjoyed by Norway – which is also out of the EU but in the single market, so it has a say on the rules being imposed by Brussels.

Under the terms of the proposed deal, the EU will have to give the UK notice of future EU regulations intended for Northern Ireland. The Joint Ministerial Committee will then be able to lodge an objection, which may then result in the EU voluntarily choosing to disapply the regulation in Northern Ireland.

Alternatively, the Speaker of the Stormont Assembly could put the issue to a vote, which could delay when the forthcoming regulation comes into force. If the EU decides to take legal action because of a failure to implement the rule, then a Northern Ireland court would have to rule on the issue first, resulting in further delays.

This movement is likely to be welcomed by some. But this is arguably the biggest area of compromise for Brexiteers and unionists, since it does not give the outright veto on future EU regulations, which is something the DUP want.

The third change is the one revealed at the start of this article: that control of the so-called level playing field of measures, like VAT rates and state subsidy policy, will revert to Westminster. For constitutionalists, this will be seen as an important change.

Almost complete for some time, according to sources, none of this package has been formally briefed to the parties or the public.

Number 10 insists that negotiations are live, but other government sources suggest there is almost no activity still going on, and the principles of the agreement are settled even if there is some haggling on wording still to do.

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PM ‘won’t sell anyone out’

How the deal was done

Mr Sunak came into office wanting to establish a reputation for sorting out problems, particularly the poor relations with the EU and – to a lesser extent the US – over Brexit.

The PM wanted to ensure President Biden turns up in Northern Ireland for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement this Easter, meaning he needed to do a deal to ensure the Stormont Assembly was back up and running by then.

For this to happen, the PM needed the DUP to agree to a deal on the Protocol, and then go back into powersharing with Sinn Fein in order to form a government.

So, one key objective throughout these negotiations has been for Mr Sunak to get the hardline unionists on board. It was always a tall order, but it was one he chose to attempt. But it is on precisely this issue that Number 10 took an extraordinary – and some think reckless – gamble.

Despite needing the DUP onside, they decided not to talk to them personally. They decided that they did not want them involved in any way in the negotiations or feeding in thoughts, fearing this would make the talks unmanageable, so they were shut out.

Senior DUP sources tell me there were “no backchannels” to try and scope out what they needed, which they said was a contrast even from the Theresa May era.

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Sunak and Starmer clash over Protocol

Instead, the UK negotiating team were told to look up the DUP’s seven tests for a Northern Ireland Protocol replacement – which feature prominently on their website and in speeches by leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson – and find a solution to each one. One insider described it as the “spreadsheet approach” to the issue.

“We assumed that if you solve the problems in the seven tests, the DUP would be on board. That was certainly the presumption all the way along,” said one government source.

Then in an extraordinary moment three weeks ago, government sources started briefing the newspapers that the deal had successfully answered every one of the DUP’s tests, but without offering an explanation of how or why.

This entire approach flabbergasted the DUP. The tests were drawn up 18 months ago, in another political environment. They range from the broad – number four is “Giving NI people a say in their laws” – to the specific, such as number five, which states “No checks on goods between GB/NI”.

Read more:
What do we know about the deal being discussed by the UK and EU?

They were devised after conversations with the Johnson government, and were not designed to have a binary answer. Whether the tests were met was to be judged by the DUP alone.

Yet now the government was briefing journalists that the DUP’s concerns had been soothed, and their objections dealt with, without even telling them how.

“These tests weren’t designed to be used in that way”, said one senior DUP member. “If we’d known they were going to assume this level of importance we would have rewritten them and sharpened them”, they said.

Meanwhile, the DUP baulking at the tests has caused huge anger in government. Privately, some accuse the party of game playing and moving the goal posts. The DUP retort that if the goal was to get them on side, they should have opened a dialogue with them in person.

This move worsened the politics, although both sides also acknowledge that however badly Number 10 may have handled this, there was perhaps no deal ever to be made that satisfied both the DUP and the EU.

The trouble is, Downing Street only now appears to be grappling with this outcome afresh, with Brexiteers rowing in behind the DUP to make clear they are going to oppose the deal outlined.

So what next?

It is unclear how the prime minister will proceed. He has three options: press ahead, fully renegotiate or abandon his plan.

If he presses forward in the face of DUP and ERG opposition, he could face trench warfare in the Commons, whether or not any deal is put to a vote.

Mr Sunak would try to become the first Tory PM since 2010 to take on the Eurosceptics and not lose – as David Cameron did ultimately in 2016, then Theresa May did in 2019.

Alternatively, Mr Sunak could fully resume the negotiations, which despite the rhetoric, are mostly on pause at the moment.

However, the EU is unlikely to give more, and cannot bow to the DUP demand that Northern Ireland is no longer bound by future EU rules – for fear of destabilising member states and Norway, which is also in the single market but not the EU.

Or Mr Sunak could abandon the reforms, which would make clear the limits of his power and raise questions about whether he was running a “zombie” regime locked in coalition with truculent and weary Tory MPs.

If he does not do a deal, he will also have to decide whether to press ahead with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which would give the UK government unilateral power to rip up the Northern Ireland section of the original Brexit treaty.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, London. Picture date: Wednesday February 22, 2023.
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Rishi Sunak speaks during PMQs

Sky News understands that this is facing 90 amendments in the House of Lords, meaning that it is all but impossible to get through without resorting to the Parliament Act – the legislative nuclear option to override a veto by peers.

It is understood the PM is arguing against this in sessions with MPs, suggesting that a bitter parliamentary fight over the passage of the bill would reduce leverage with the EU rather than increase it as the ERG claim.

Mr Sunak has no easy options.

Once he is done with this, the next fight will be over legislation on migration, which some Tories believe will fail unless it goes further than is permitted by the European Convention on Human Rights – something that would enrage the EU all over again. The parade of Tory MPs raising this issue today in PMQs alone made clear the scale of the fight on that.

Meanwhile, within weeks, the privileges committee inquiry into whether former PM Boris Johnson lied at the despatch box will begin, with televised hearings raking over the wounds of one of the most painful episodes of recent Tory history.

The prime minister may have calmed things down, but there are toxic challenges ahead. Can he prove he’s not running a lame duck administration, or will it get worse?

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The presumption in Westminster is the next general election will take place in the back half of next year.

But it only takes 37 Tory MPs to defy the PM and vote in a confidence vote alongside the opposition to trigger an election. Could things get that heated?

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Israel announces military operation expanding in Gaza to seize ‘large areas’

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Israel announces military operation expanding in Gaza to seize 'large areas'

Israel is beginning a major expansion of its military operation in Gaza and will seize large areas of the territory, the country’s defence minister said.

Israel Katz said in a statement that there would be a large scale evacuation of the Palestinian population from fighting areas.

In a post on X, he wrote: “I call on the residents of Gaza to act now to remove Hamas and return all the hostages. This is the only way to end the war.”

He said the offensive was “expanding to crush and clean the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure and capture large areas that will be added to the security zones of the State of Israel”.

The expansion of Israel’s military operation in Gaza deepens its renewed offensive.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that had begun in January ended in March as Israel launched various air strikes on targets across Gaza.

The deal had seen the release of dozens of hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, but collapsed before it could move to phase two, which would have involved the release of all hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

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26 March: Anti-Hamas chants heard at protest in Gaza

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had already issued evacuation warnings to Gazans living around the southern city of Rafah and towards the city of Khan Yunis, telling them to move to the al Mawasi area on the shore, which was previously designated a humanitarian zone.

Israeli forces have already set up a significant buffer zone within Gaza, having expanded an area around the edge of the territory that had existed before the war, as well as a large security area in the so-called Netzarim corridor through the middle of Gaza.

This latest conflict began when Hamas launched an attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages.

The ensuing Israeli offensive has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Read more:
Father demands protection after Gaza aid workers’ deaths
Anti-Hamas chants heard at rare protest in Gaza

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Bodies of aid workers found in Gaza

Aid group Doctors Without Borders warned on Wednesday that Israel’s month-long siege of Gaza means some critical medications are now short in supply and are running out, leaving Palestinians at risk of losing vital healthcare.

“The Israeli authorities’ have condemned the people of Gaza to unbearable suffering with their deadly siege,” said Myriam Laaroussi, the group’s emergency coordinator in Gaza.

“This deliberate infliction of harm on people is like a slow death; it must end immediately.”

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‘Liberation day is here’: But what will it mean for global trade?

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'Liberation day is here': But what will it mean for global trade?

“Liberation day” was due to be on 1 April. But Donald Trump decided to shift it by a day because he didn’t want anyone to think it was an April fool.

It is no joke for him and it is no joke for governments globally as they brace for his tariff announcements.

It is stunning how little we know about the plans to be announced in the Rose Garden of the White House later today.

It was telling that we didn’t see the President at all on Tuesday. He and all his advisers were huddled in the West Wing, away from the cameras, finalising the tariff plans.

Follow the events of Liberation Day live as they unfold

Three key figures are central to it all.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the so-called ‘measured voice’. A former hedge fund manager, he has argued for targeted not blanket tariffs.

Peter Navarro is Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing. A long-time aide and confidante of the president, he is a true loyalist and a firm believer in the merits of tariffs.

More on Donald Trump

His economic views are well beyond mainstream economic thought – precisely why he appeals to Trump.

‘Stop that crap’: Trump adviser Peter Navarro reacts to Sky News correspondent’s question over tariffs

The third key character is Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary and the biggest proponent of the full-throttle liberation day tariff juggernaut.

The businessman, philanthropist, Trump fundraiser and billionaire (net worth ranging between $1bn and $2bn) has been among the closest to Trump over the past 73 days of this presidency – frequently in and out of the West Wing.

If anything goes wrong, observers here in Washington suspect Trump will make Lutnick the fall guy.

What are Donald Trump’s tariffs, what is ‘liberation day’ and how does it all affect the UK?

And what if it does all go wrong? What if Trump is actually the April fool?

“It’s going to work…” his press secretary said when asked if it could all be a disaster, driving up the cost of living for Americans and creating global economic chaos.

“The president has a brilliant team who have been studying these issues for decades and we are focussed on restoring the global age of America…” Karoline Leavitt said.

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‘Days of US being ripped off are over’

Dancing to the president’s tune

My sense is that we should see “liberation day” not as the moment it’s all over in terms of negotiations for countries globally as they try to carve out deals with the White House. Rather it should be seen as the start.

Trump, as always, wants to be seen as the one calling the shots, taking control, seizing the limelight. He wants the world to dance to his tune. Today is his moment.

But beyond today, alongside the inevitable tit-for-tat retaliation, expect to see efforts by nations to seek carve-outs and to throw bones to Trump; to identify areas where trade policies can be tweaked to placate the president.

Even small offerings which change little in a material sense could give Trump the chance to spin and present himself as the winning deal maker he craves to be.

One significant challenge for foreign governments and their diplomats in Washington has been engaging the president himself with proposals he might like.

Negotiations take place with a White House team who are themselves unsure where the president will ultimately land. It’s resulted in unsatisfactory speculative negotiations.

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Treasury minister: ‘We’ll do everything to secure a deal’

Too much faith placed in the ‘special relationship’?

The UK believes it’s in a better position than most other countries globally. It sits outside the EU giving it autonomy in its trade policy, its deficit with the US is small, and Trump loves Britain.

It’s true too that the UK government has managed to accelerate trade conversations with the White House on a tariff-free trade partnership. Trump’s threats have forced conversations that would normally sit in the long grass for months.

Yet, for now, the conversations have yielded nothing firm. That’s a worry for sure. Did Keir Starmer have too much faith in the ‘special relationship’?

Downing Street will have identified areas where they can tweak trade policy to placate Trump. Cars maybe? Currently US cars into the UK carry a 10% tariff. Digital services perhaps?

US food? Unlikely – there are non-tariff barriers on US food because the consensus seems to be that chlorinated chicken and the like isn’t something UK consumers want.

Easier access to UK financial services maybe? More visas for Americans?

For now though, everyone is waiting to see what Trump does before they either retaliate or relent and lower their own market barriers.

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Bodies still remain among the ‘collapsed and inclining’ buildings in quake-hit Mandalay

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Bodies still remain among the 'collapsed and inclining' buildings in quake-hit Mandalay

A man inside Mandalay has told Sky News bodies remain under “collapsed and inclining” buildings after the Myanmar earthquake – as a woman was freed from rubble after 91 hours.

The local inside Myanmar said many of the structures in the city were wrecked or badly damaged after the 7.7 magnitude quake on Friday, adding: “There are some bodies, some dead bodies, that still remain and other destruction”.

Meanwhile, in a televised address, Myanmar’s military leader Min Aung Hlaing said the number of dead had risen to 2,719 and is expected to exceed 3,000.

Some 4,521 people have been injured, while a further 441 are missing.

More than 10,000 buildings are known to have collapsed or been severely damaged in central and northwest Myanmar, the World Health Organisation said.

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Before and after: Myanmar earthquake

Smell of dead bodies near destroyed buildings

In Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, which was close to the quake’s epicentre, 50 children and two teachers were killed when their preschool collapsed, the United Nations said.

The local in the city told Sky News that “a lot of local assistance associations like charity groups are still struggling with digging out the corpses, the dead bodies, from the destruction”.

He said that “when we pass near the destructions, the collapsed building or very damaged building, we can smell” dead bodies.

“The smell of the dead bodies after four days… it still remains,” he said, before adding: “For the social assistance association… they need permission [to give aid] especially from the government.

“If they don’t have permission, then they cannot do anything.”

People sheltering in a makeshift tent camp in Mandalay. Pic: Reuters
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People sheltering in a makeshift tent camp in Mandalay. Pic: Reuters

He also said others in Mandalay are struggling after the earthquake, which followed the city being affected by cyclones, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the civil war in Myanmar – where a junta seized power in a coup in 2021.

“Some people, they say they have nothing at all,” the local added. “They have no more home, they have no more belongings, because its already damaged.”

Woman freed after 91 hours under rubble

It comes after the fire department in Myanmar’s capital freed a woman trapped under rubble 91 hours after the building collapsed.

The 63-year-old woman was freed early on Tuesday in Naypyidaw.

As the country continues to recover, a worker from the International Rescue Committee said people fear aftershocks and are sleeping outside on roads or in open fields.

Communities are struggling to meet basic needs such as access to clean water and sanitation, and emergency teams are working “tirelessly” to locate survivors and provide aid, the UN said in a report.

Rescue efforts have been complicated by the civil war, as rebel groups say the junta has conducted airstrikes, even after the quake, while NGOs fear that certain areas could be denied vital supplies.

“Myanmar’s military has a longstanding practice of denying aid to areas where groups who resist it are active,” said Joe Freeman, a researcher with Amnesty Myanmar.

“It must immediately allow unimpeded access to all humanitarian organisations and remove administrative barriers delaying needs assessments.”

Read more:
Military regime targeting ‘civilian areas’ in ‘wake of disaster’
Myanmar earthquake leaves some areas almost completely destroyed

The quake was the strongest to hit the southeast Asian country in more than a century.

In neighbouring Thailand, rescuers are still scouring the ruins of a collapsed, unfinished skyscraper for any signs of life.

“There are about 70 bodies underneath, and we hope by some miracle one or two are still alive,” volunteer rescue leader Bin Bunluerit said.

Six human-shaped figures have been detected by scanners, said Bangkok’s deputy governor, Tavida Kamolvej.

Thirteen deaths have been confirmed at the building site, with 74 people still missing, while Thailand’s national number of dead stands at 20.

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