Boris Johnson wants to “bring down” Rishi Sunak over post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland, former Tory chancellor George Osborne has said.
The prime minister is thought to be on the verge of signing a deal with the EU to resolve the protocol dispute – but an announcement has been paused as No 10 tries to convince the DUP to accept the compromise.
Mr Johnson was accused of “teachery” after he made it known that he believes dropping the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill – which would empower the UK to unilaterally scrap parts of the treaty – would be a “great mistake”.
And Mr Osborne said Mr Johnson was using the issue in a bid to topple Mr Sunak. “Boris Johnson is interested in becoming prime minister again,” he told Channel 4’s The Andrew Neil Show.
The ex-chancellor said: “And he wants to bring down Rishi Sunak and he will use any instrument to do it. And if the Northern Ireland negotiations are that instrument, he will pick it up and hit Mr Sunak over the head with it.”
“If you wait for Boris Johnson to do the sort of grown-up, sensible thing, he’s not going to do that if he thinks there’s a political opportunity in causing trouble,” he added.
Former Tory Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan told The Independent that Mr Johnson had embarked on “suicidal treachery” with his intervention.
Tory defence committee chair Tobias Ellwood warned he was deliberately “scuppering” Tory election prospects for personal gain, while former minister Stephen Hammond said the intervention was “unhelpful” at a delicate time in talks.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, Northern Ireland secretary Chris Heaton-Harris and the EU Commission’s Maros Sefcovic will hold talks by video link on Monday afternoon, fuelling speculation that an agreement is close.
Mr Sunak had been expected to announce a deal early this week, but No 10 officials are now pushing back on expectations of an agreement on Tuesday or Wednesday as they try to get the DUP and Tory Brexiteers on side. The DUP have claimed a deal is unlikely this week.
Sammy Wilson, the DUP chief whip at Westminster, accused Mr Sunak’s ministers of going into the negotiations with the EU with “an attitude of defeat” and said that he did not expect to see a deal announced this week.
“If a deal is agreed which still keeps us in the EU single market, as ministers in the Northern Ireland Assembly we would be required by law to implement that deal and we are not going to do that because we believe such an arrangement is designed to take us out of the UK,” he told Sky News on Monday.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the DUP
It is not clear whether any compromise forged by Mr Sunak with the EU to ease protocol checks will be put to a vote in parliament – but the European Research Group (ERG) has warned of a major Tory rebellion if it comes to the Commons.
Tory MP Sir James Duddridge, close ally of Mr Johnson, said more than 100 MPs could defy the prime minister on the issue. He warned that Brexiteers “will be furious at any backroom deal that relies on support by the Labour Party”.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has taken unusual step of offering to back the deal, saying Mr Sunak “doesn’t need to go scrambling around to appease an intransigent rump of his own backbenchers”.
Sir Keir restated his offer to help Mr Sunak on Monday. “The national interest comes first,” he told reporters. “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.”
Rishi Sunak is under pressure from all sides of Brexit debate
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 – would be “completely disastrous”.
“If it doesn’t get the support of both communities in Northern Ireland it is just going to make things worse because it will cement in place an agreement that has destroyed powersharing in Northern Ireland,” he told Times Radio on Monday.
Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt appeared to admit on Sunday that a deal could not be agreed without DUP support. “Unless it’s acceptable to all communities in Northern Ireland it’s not going to work,” she told Sky News.
However, Mr Sunak is willing to defy the DUP and sign a deal even if he cannot get the unionist party on board, according to The Times.
A Whitehall source told the newspaper that it would be “unhelpful” to “set a bar that is not necessarily in the interests of those we are trying to negotiate for”.
UK and EU negotiators are thought to have agree a “green lane” to reduce checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as a greater role for Northern Irish courts in resolving disputes.
But DUP are still angry that a role for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) as the ultimate arbiter looks to have been maintained, as well as the province continuing to follow EU rules on VAT and other areas.
In pointed remarks, Micheál Martin, Republic of Ireland’s foreign minister, urged UK politicians not to play games. “I think what’s very important is that everybody now from here on think about the people of Northern Ireland – not power play, not politics elsewhere,” he said on Monday.
