Rees-Mogg says Sunak’s handling of Northern Ireland protocol talks ‘very similar to May’ – UK politics live | Politics

Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, is facing calls to offer a bigger pay rise to public sector workers to break months of strike deadlock, after official figures showed stronger than expected government finances, my colleagues Richard Partington and Julia Kollewe report.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary and a former chair of the European Research Group, which represents hardline pro-Brexit Tory MPs, has used his “Moggcast” podcast to criticise Rishi Sunak’s handling of the Northern Ireland protocol negotiations.

• Rees-Mogg accused Sunak of being like Theresa May (not a compliment in Tory Brexit circles). Referring to the way No 10 has handled the talks with the EU on rewriting the protocol, with Tory MPs being kept in the dark, he said:

It’s quite surprising, because this is very similar to what happened with Theresa May.

So a story would appear in the Times and Downing Street would say: ‘No, this isn’t quite right, it isn’t at all right’.

And then a week or two would go by and it would turn out to be completely right and they would hope that people would just conveniently fall in behind the announced policy.

And life doesn’t work like that. It’s important to get support for it first before you finalise the details and that doesn’t seem to have been done here.

There seems to me to be no point in agreeing a deal that does not restore power-sharing.

That must be the objective. If it doesn’t achieve that objective, I don’t understand why the government is spending political capital on something that won’t ultimately succeed.

Sunak definitely wants the DUP to back the deal because he wants power-sharing restored in Northern Ireland, and that won’t happen until the DUP lifts its protocol-inspired boycott of the institutions. But it has been reported that Sunak would be willing to strike a deal without DUP support if he thought it was in the interests of Northern Ireland as a whole. And, while Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, said at the weekend that any deal would have to pass the DUP’s seven tests, No 10 is not taking this line in public.

As Raoul Ruparel, an adviser to May when she was PM, pointed out on Twitter yesterday, in 2019 Rees-Mogg also argued that any Brexit deal would have to be acceptable to the DUP – before he backed the Boris Johnson deal opposed by the DUP because it created a GB/NI customs border in the Irish Sea.

• Rees-Mogg defended the Northern Ireland protocol bill, which No 10 seems happy to shelve, saying it has the support of “the person who had a mandate from the British voters” – ie, Boris Johnson. The bill would allow the UK government to unilaterally abandon parts of the current protocol (even though some lawyers say this would be against international law).

The Daily Mail’s Jason Groves has posted a link to the podcast on Twitter.

The UK government ran a surprise £5.4bn surplus in January, after bumper self-assessment income tax receipts, leaving some rooms for giveaways in the chancellor’s budget next month, according to some economists. My colleague Julia Kollewe has the story here.

Good morning. Rishi Sunak is still trying to close a deal on the Northern Ireland protocol. A few days ago reporters were briefed that he would be unveiling it at cabinet today, but there has been a hold-up because he is still trying to secure the support of Tory Brexiters in the European Research Group and the DUP. The story is stuck in a “not much happening in public” phase.

But that does mean there is no crisis or tension. This is the hardest political problem Sunak has had to face as PM and three outcomes are possible. 1) Sunak pushes ahead with a deal rejected by the DUP, triggering a large revolt by Tory Brexiters. 2) Sunak pushes ahead with a deal, but the DUP is supportive, or at least not too critical, and any Tory revolt is relatively limited. 3) Sunak abandons trying to get a deal for now, and carries on with a status quo. Option 2) would be a small triumph; Sunak would have achieved something that eluded Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. But option 1) would be a disaster for his leadership, and option 3) would amount to a failure too.

Although there is not much happening on the surface, today the Times has splashed on claims that some ministers could resign over the deal proposed by Sunak. In their story Steven Swinford, Oliver Wright and Bruno Waterfield report:

Another minister told The Times that ministers would quit if the government tried to force through a deal that undermined Northern Ireland’s sovereignty by leaving the province beholden to existing and future EU single market rules.

“The naivety is astonishing,” the minister said. “The strategy hasn’t worked. People won’t allow something that doesn’t ensure sovereignty. Ministers will resign. I couldn’t look myself in the eye and vote through something I thought would undermine sovereignty in Northern Ireland.”

Yesterday, as my colleagues Jessica Elgot, Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey report in our overnight story, Suella Braverman, the home secretary, went public with a strong hint about her reservations over Sunak’s strategy. Braverman is also thought to be concerned that Sunak’s forthcoming asylum bill might not be as draconian as she wants, and No 10 must be keeping an eye on her intentions.

Maria Caulfield, the health minister, was doing an interview round this morning. She played down reports that colleagues were on the brink of resignation, and urged people to wait until the deal was finalised. She told Times Radio:

I think we need to support the prime minister.

There isn’t a deal done yet so all these rumours about ministers or MPs not being happy, I haven’t seen the details, we have to give the prime minister that time and space to get these negotiations done. We need to give him the time and space to thrash out the final elements of any final deal.

We may – or may not – get significant developments on this today. There are also significant developments in the SNP leadership contest, where Kate Forbes’s campaign is in trouble, and Keir Starmer is giving a speech to the NFU.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Rishi Sunak chairs cabinet.

10.40am: Mark Spencer, the farming minister, gives a speech to the NFU conference. There will also be a short video address from Sunak.

11.15am: Prof Sir Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, and other health officials give evidence to the Commons health committee about prevention in health and social care.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

2pm: Keir Starmer speaks to the NFU conference.

3pm: Victoria Prentis, the attorney general, gives evidence to the Commons justice committee.

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