PMQs: Starmer blames Northern Ireland deal delay on Sunak’s weakness as leader

Rishi Sunak’s failure so far to bring forward a new deal on the Northern Ireland protocol gave Keir Starmer an opportunity at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions to stoke tensions within the Conservative Party around the post-Brexit trading arrangement. Sources told the Guardian this week that there was “a lot of fear of a sell-out” at a European Research group meeting on Monday. Home Secretary and former ERG chair Suella Braverman has urged the Prime Minister not to abandon Boris Johnson’s controversial legislation to allow the government to unilaterally override the protocol, which is understood to be part of the deal package currently being discussed.

Starmer gave Sunak a number of opportunities to distance himself from the approach of his predecessor. The Labour leader asked Sunak if he agreed that the protocol had been “poorly implemented”, declaring that Johnson’s claim during his time as Prime Minister that there would “no barriers of any kind” was “absolute nonsense”. The Labour leader said: “In the interest of restoring that trust, will he confirm that to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland, the deal he’s negotiating is going to see Northern Ireland continue to follow some EU law?”

Sunak’s response – accusing Starmer of “jumping ahead” on the contents of a deal that the Prime Minister had reportedly been planning to announce on Tuesday – allowed the Labour leader to point to Sunak’s handling of negotiations as further evidence of his weakness as Tory Party leader. Starmer argued that the “irreconciliables” on the Conservative benches “are going to twig” and “come after him” about the extent of alignment with the EU allowed in the new deal, declaring that the Prime Minister was “pulling the wool” over his backbenchers’ eyes. He stressed the repercussions of this approach not just for the Tory Party but for the country, telling MPs: “It’s the same old story. The country has to wait while he plucks up the courage to take on the malcontents, the reckless, the wreckers on his own benches.”

As he did when Sunak was facing a backbench rebellion over his housing policy, Starmer sought to embarrass the Prime Minister by offering Labour’s support to get any new deal over the line, telling MPs: “We will put country before party.” Sunak’s claim that he would be “resolute in fighting for what is best for Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom” was undermined by his flippant response about Starmer “jumping head” on the extent of EU alignment allowed in the deal, which suggested that Sunak is more concerned about how his plan will be received by his backbenches than he is letting on. In this context, the Labour leader’s final question – “Why doesn’t he just get on with it?” – was simple and effective, inviting the people of Northern Ireland, who have faced months of political turmoil as a result of the tensions around the protocol, to wonder how far Sunak is prioritising Tory Party unity over their country’s political and economic stability.