Boris Johnson fires a warning shot to Sunak

Rishi Sunak is once again facing an unhelpful intervention from one of his predecessors. As the Prime Minister attempts to finalise a deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol – spending the past few days meeting both with the DUP and the president of the European Commission – Boris Johnson has issued a warning. A source close to Johnson told the Sunday Telegraph that ditching the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill in favour of a new Brexit deal would be a ‘great mistake’. Speaking this morning on the BBC, government minister Penny Mordaunt sought to downplay the comment – describing it as ‘not an entirely unhelpful intervention’.

The intervention is focussed on Sunak’s method of negotiating with Brussels. While Johnson is the one who signed up to deal in the first place, insisting that there would be no checks on goods, he later acknowledged that the arrangement did not work for Northern Ireland and the Union.