We congratulate Rishi Sunak – he may just have got Brexit done at last
WE congratulate Rishi Sunak. He may just have got Brexit done at last.
Yes, there may still be a devil in the details. But his new deal on Northern Ireland looks a big win.
It is certainly a vast improvement on the Protocol which Boris Johnson had to sign to get our EU exit over the line in 2020.
The new “Windsor Framework” allows for the unfettered movement of goods in and out of the province, with full access to British food, drink and medicines and UK tax rates.
The sausage wars are over.
Crucially, it will give politicians — if the DUP returns to power-sharing — a block on EU legal rulings applying to them.
That is a massive concession extracted by the PM from a Brussels which once swore never to budge.
Ireland has an open border between two separate markets. It is unrealistic to imagine courts on the EU side having NO say over that.
But Stormont and Westminster being able, if need be, to prevent EU laws taking effect in Northern Ireland is a game-changer.
The agreement is also key to unlocking a new era of friendship between Britain and the EU after the bad blood since 2016.
Most read in The Sun
That promises much greater co-operation on everything from the small boats to our access to the Horizon Europe science research programme.
It was still unwise for King Charles to gladhand EU chief Ursula von der Leyen yesterday in Windsor. The deal is not finalised.
MPs have yet to give their verdict, including the DUP who will loathe any hint that even the monarch is railroading them into it.
To us, though, this agreement looks as close to a solution as we will ever get over the Northern Ireland border — an apparently unsolvable conundrum since Brexit was first mooted.
This year, Rishi’s resolve has seen off Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland and shored up the union. His negotiating skill and grasp of detail seem now to have cleared Brexit’s final hurdle too.
Huge credit to him for both.
Lethal idiocy
THE petition was signed by all the usual Westminster suspects . . . the hard-Left and hard-of-thinking.
How righteously they demanded that a flight deporting 23 criminals to Jamaica be stopped and the thugs remain in the UK on human rights grounds.
Pathetically, they cried racism and shamefully equated it to the Windrush scandal.
Virtue-signalling celebrities backed this facile crusade. And the human rights legal industry went to work.
Six months later, one of those they “saved” butchered a man in the street.
Well done to them all.
Read More on The US Sun
But for them, Ernesto Elliott’s victim would be alive today. Will any apologise or reflect on their stupidity? No.
Because being impeccably liberal, even towards vicious killers, always trumps any threat to the public.