Boris Johnson warned of new clash with MPs over N Ireland protocol

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Boris Johnson has been warned that his plan to rip up post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland will provoke a new row with Conservative MPs without necessarily restoring the region’s power-sharing executive.

Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, has told the prime minister that the pro-UK Democratic Unionist party, which refused to join the executive after elections in May, has not agreed that it will begin the process of rejoining if the new legislation is published.

Meanwhile Conservative whips, who enforce party discipline, have told Johnson, who survived a confidence vote among Tory MPs on Monday by 211 votes to 148, that party grandees will fight the passage of the bill through parliament.

Separately the EU has said that if Johnson unilaterally rips up the Northern Ireland Protocol, which is part of his 2020 Brexit deal, British scientists will be locked out of the €95bn Horizon Europe research project.

Ministers had planned to publish legislation overriding the protocol on Wednesday but government officials said that could slip into next week, as Johnson tries to stabilise his party after the damaging revolt by 41 per cent of his MPs.

Johnson has argued that the high-stakes move is needed to help shore up the peace process in Northern Ireland. He hopes to persuade the DUP to return to Stormont to share power with Sinn Féin, the nationalist party that won last month’s elections.

But Lewis has warned Johnson that hardliners in the DUP could resist a return to Stormont. “Brandon hasn’t definitively said they won’t go in, but we have no firm commitments,” said one official briefed on the discussions.

“There are no guarantees. They are in a better place, but it remains to be seen what course of action they take.”

Some in the DUP have argued the party should refuse to take part in the executive in the hope that this would lead to new elections, which could allow them to fare better. Failure to form an executive effectively paralyses government in the region.

Theresa May, former prime minister, last month said Johnson should consider what the proposed Northern Ireland legislation would say about the UK’s “willingness to abide by treaties which it has signed”.

Meanwhile Jesse Norman, the former Treasury minister, told Johnson this week that any breach of the Northern Irish protocol would be “economically very damaging, politically foolhardy and almost certainly illegal”.

The bill will also run into fierce opposition from the pro-EU peers in the House of Lords, and the government could face a challenge over the legality of the bill under international law.

The legislation will hand ministers powers to switch off parts of the controversial protocol, which creates a trade border in the Irish Sea in order to avoid the return of a hard border on the island of Ireland.

One senior Tory MP said: “This bill has law wobble, DUP wobble and party wobble.”

Senior Whitehall insiders said Lewis had initially told Johnson that tabling the controversial Northern Ireland Bill would convince the DUP to at least agree that a Speaker be elected to the assembly, enabling caretaker ministers to take up their roles.

DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson © Brian Lawless/PA

However, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, struck an uncompromising tone on Tuesday, writing in The News Letter, the region’s pro-Unionist newspaper, that if the issue of the protocol was not resolved, “then Northern Ireland would be without a devolved government”.

A senior DUP insider added that Donaldson “felt under no pressure” to restore the region’s democratic institutions “until the protocol issue is dealt with”.

The UK government has obtained legal advice arguing that the bill to override the protocol would be considered legal under international law, based on a higher obligation to protect the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, but that view is expected to be challenged.

Whitehall insiders say that initial legal advice obtained by attorney-general Suella Braverman had warned that the government’s case for justifying unilateral action to override the protocol, rather than using provisions contained within it, was legally weak.

George Freeman, science minister, is due to visit Brussels on Wednesday for a last-ditch attempt to persuade the EU to unlock the UK’s participation in Horizon and other EU science programmes, which was agreed as part of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

“The Northern Ireland protocol and our membership of Horizon, Euratom and Copernicus are completely separate,” he told the FT. “They’re not connected in any way.”