LONDON, (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak won the backing of parliament yesterday for a key element of a reworked post-Brexit deal on Northern Ireland despite opposition from the province’s biggest unionist party and some of his lawmakers.
Sunak has tried to end years of wrangling over Brexit by revisiting one of the trickiest parts of the negotiations – to ensure smooth trade to Northern Ireland without creating a hard border with Britain or with European Union-member Ireland.
He agreed with the EU to introduce the “Stormont brake”, aimed at offering Northern Ireland more control over whether to accept any new EU laws, as part of the so-called Windsor Framework of measures.
But in Wednesday’s vote in the lower house of parliament, those he most wanted to win over – Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), some Conservative eurosceptics in the European Research Group (ERG) and his two predecessors, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – rebelled by voting against the brake.
Despite the opposition, Sunak won the vote by 515 to 29, managing to contain the size of the rebellion but with a substantial number of Conservatives abstaining. Opposition parties voted in support of the brake.
Sunak’s ministers welcomed the vote.
