Is a better Brexit actually possible?

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak looks ready to agree to a new Brexit deal with the European Union, ending the dispute over Northern Ireland.

Sunak is yet to sign the final agreement, said The Times, but an outline of the plans could be announced in the coming weeks. The government said it was still “engaging in intensive scoping talks with the EU” on customs in Northern Ireland, but the paper added that the EU has now agreed to “avoid the need for routine checks on products” destined for the region, paving the way to a deal.

The UK meanwhile has agreed that “the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will remain the ultimate arbiter of any protocol disputes”, said The Independent, but there will be a “stronger role for Northern Irish courts”.

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The proposed deal, modelled on the UK’s plan “for a ‘green’ lane” of goods to Northern Ireland, risks inflaming Brexit tensions within the Tory party and presents the prime minister with an uphill battle in convincing the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to sign up.

What did the papers say?

Sunak has had the “Northern Ireland Brexit deal on his desk for over a week”, said The Times, with his team “acutely aware of the need to manage the messaging surrounding any announcement” to convince the DUP and the hard Brexiteers in the European Research Group (ERG). Brussels however, remained “concerned” about the delays in signing off the agreement.

However, the prime minister is aiming to “swerve a Commons confrontation with hardline Brexiters”, with the plan “unlikely to necessitate a formal vote in parliament”, said The Guardian.

Sunak remains “under pressure from a divided Tory party”, said The Independent, with Eurosceptics pushing for him to hold off on the deal and others willing him to compromise.

One of the biggest challenges to a making new deal possible could come from the ERG, but The Guardian reports that if the two former organisers of the group, Chris Heaton-Harris and Steve Baker, who now work in the Northern Ireland Office, back the deal then “it would be difficult for the group to mount a protest big enough to damage Sunak”.

But the ERG has said it “is ‘in lockstep’ with the Unionists” that there is a need to “eliminate all border checks and remove EU law from the province”, said The Telegraph. It said a source insisted the DUP “will not ‘go wobbly’” and cave to the government’s new deal if it didn’t meet their requirements. Members of ERG also remain “unhappy at the prospect of any role for the ECJ”, said The Independent.

Brexit tensions were already heightened within the Tory party before news of the proposed deal. Tory Brexit supporters “reacted with anger” to the news that a cross-party conference on the “shortcomings of the UK’s departure from the EU” took place between high-ranking members of government and opposition, including Michael Gove, at Ditchley Park, said the i news site.

Brexit supporters have accused it of being an “attempt to weaken the Brexit deal”. Former Tory party leader Iain Duncan Smith told the i news site it was “diverting attention” away from dealing with the issues around the Northern Ireland Protocol.

What next?

The Ditchley Park summit came with “unhelpful timing for the prime minister”, wrote Katy Balls in The Spectator, even if it does not directly “impact Brexit in a meaningful way”. However, it shows that senior figures are becoming “more vocal” in their views on “Brexit’s shortcomings”.

Those on the right of the Tory party remain on “high alert” as Sunak prepares to agree his Northern Ireland deal, wary of indications that the government is “going back on its Brexit promises and agreeing to a compromise too far”.

Those on both sides though must face the “political reality” that the public is “increasingly disillusioned with Brexit”, said The New Statesman, as well as the “economic reality” that the “UK’s malaise has been deepened” by it. For the foreseeable future “the best option is for Remainers and Leavers alike to try to make Brexit work”.

A closer relationship with EU “is possible to envisage” in the long term, wrote David Hayward at the independent research group UK in a Changing Europe, but it requires “the necessary ‘political space’” not afforded by the Tories or Labour currently. He warns, however, that “supporters and opponents of the Brexit status quo” should take the current polling that “a clear majority remains dissatisfied with Brexit” very seriously.