NI Protocol: Would the real Steve Baker please stand up?

By Gareth GordonBBC News NI Political Correspondent

Steve Baker was appointed to his role in the Northern Ireland Office by Prime Minister Liz Truss

Would the real Steve Baker please stand up?

Actually he was sitting when he loved-bombed Ireland and the European Union on a stage at the Conservative Party conference.

And so were we – which is a good thing – as we might have fallen down instead.

So who is the man whose appointment as a minister of state at the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) was described as “obnoxious” by SDLP MP Claire Hanna. And why does it matter?

Well until this week he was, in the minds of those who care, the Eurosceptic’s Eurosceptic.

A politician who chaired the right-wing European Research Group (ERG) during the Brexit campaign and its aftermath.

And so on Sunday night, the BBC News NI political team went to Hall One at the International Conference Centre in Birmingham to see him, another former chair of the ERG, the Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris, and the other NIO Minister Lord Caine, talk all things Northern Ireland.

News wise our expectations were low. Then Steve Baker began to speak.

‘Flabbergasted’

Despite acting with “ferocious determination to get the UK out of the EU”, he wanted to bring some “humility”.

The UK, he said, did not always “behave in a way which encouraged Ireland and the European Union to trust us to accept that they have legitimate interests.

“I am sorry about that,” he said.

None of this would have come as a surprise to senior members of the Irish government.

Steve Baker said he had already conveyed these sentiments in person.

I understand the first time was at an ambassadorial event a few weeks ago.

The second was to Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney on the steps of Belfast’s St Anne’s Cathedral at the memorial service for the Queen.

I am told the Irish were “flabbergasted”, as was almost everyone else when he finally went public last Sunday night.

The DUP MP Ian Paisley, who warmly welcomed Steve Baker’s appointment at the time, said he had been “naive”.

With “great respect to my friend”, replied Steve Baker, he’d been “not the least bit naive”.

Steve Baker sat beside Simon Coveney at a service in Belfast after the death of Queen Elizabeth II

The former Ulster Unionist MP, David Burnside, who knows Steve Baker well, said he met him the following morning at the conference and joked he had become “very moderate”.

Though in his opinion, Steve Baker had not “gone native” but was instead “positioning”.

A source in the NIO said Steve Baker and Chris Heaton-Harris had not been what they had expected.

“A delight to deal with” and “a breath of fresh air” was the description.

But someone who has followed his career closely said that to understand Steve Baker you must also understand his Christian faith.

Christian faith

As the political editor of the BBC Newsnight programme, Nick Watt knows Steve Baker well.

“Everybody in Westminster and outside Westminster knows Steve Baker as a very strong Brexiteer who campaigned very strongly in the European Research Group, and put a lot of pressure on multiple prime ministers,” the journalist explained.

“What people, perhaps, don’t know quite so much about Steve Baker is the importance of his background.

“His background as an RAF engineer, that’s really important for how he approaches things. He loves skydiving, he loves the freedom of skydiving.

“He loves the freedom of going home on his motorbike, and his very, very important Christian faith. And that is intrinsic to him.”

Nick Watt said that meant Steve Baker was “somebody who reflects much more on the rights and wrongs of what he’s doing much more than people realise”.

BBC Newsnight’s Nick Watt knows Steve Baker well

“That offers some explanation for what he was saying about wanting to repair the UK’s relations with Ireland,” he continued.

“That was optically a very significant thing to say.

“But then don’t forget the substance of what he was saying, which is that the protocol in its present form isn’t going to wash.”

The criticism from the likes of Sammy Wilson and Ian Paisley aside, the DUP prefers to cling to his concluding remarks about the protocol still needing to be “resolved” and his follow-up explanation that he wanted the Irish government to reciprocate by recognising the legitimacy of unionist interests.

But it is impossible to escape the conclusion they at least smell another of those “thrown under a bus” moments they constantly fear.

One DUP source preferred to say that Steve Baker “believes in his own legend”.

And as someone who has talked about running for the Tory leadership in the past, his ambitions are unlikely to stop at the NIO.