The National Times - UK's PM vows economic win for N.Ireland from Brexit breakthrough

Sunak visited the tense province after he and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen agreed the deal on Monday, both proclaiming a "new chapter" in relations after years of Brexit tensions.

The deal follows more than a year of talks over the "Northern Ireland Protocol", which has unsettled the province 25 years on from a historic peace agreement that ended three decades of armed conflict.

Agreed in 2020 as part of Britain's EU divorce, the protocol kept Northern Ireland in the European single market for physical goods and subject to different customs rules than the rest of the United Kingdom, angering pro-UK unionists there and eurosceptics in London.

The new "Windsor Framework" has been generally well received, but it has yet to secure the backing of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Northern Ireland's largest pro-UK political force.

The DUP has been refusing to re-join a power-sharing government in Belfast for a year, mainly in protest at the protocol, which it said cut Northern Ireland adrift from the rest of the UK.

- Hitting the brake -

DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson insists the party will take its time to assess whether the agreement met its tests for returning to the Stormont assembly -- and Sunak stressed he is willing to be patient.

"People need the time to engage with it, understand it, ask the questions," he told reporters during a visit to a Coca-Cola plant in Lisburn.

Sunak told an audience of invited guests that his deal would create "the world's most exciting economic zone" with access to both EU and UK markets.

"Nobody else has that. No one. Only you guys: only here, and that is the prize," he said.

The comments prompted Scotland's pro-independence leader Nicola Sturgeon to question why the rest of the UK could not benefit from such close ties with the EU's single market.

"It underlines the unbelievably compromised position (Scotland) has been left in since being ripped out of EU against our will and denied chance to stay in single market," she tweeted.

The Windsor Framework creates a "green", largely check-free lane for goods coming from the rest of the UK that are intended to stay in Northern Ireland, without heading into Ireland and the EU's single market.

Sunak's biggest breakthrough was getting von der Leyen to agree to the "Stormont brake", which empowers the Northern Ireland assembly to stop any new EU laws from taking effect in the province.

- Egg sandwiches -

Sunak spoke Tuesday with some unionist and pro-Irish republican leaders in Northern Ireland, but was not reported to have had talks with the DUP.

After several party hardliners voiced concerns over the ECJ's enduring role under the new deal, Donaldson insisted that his party would reach a unified position.

"People will react in different ways. But the DUP will come to a collective decision," he told BBC radio.

Sunak, who took power in October, appears to have the backing of most Brexiteer MPs in his own party, though his predecessor Boris Johnson has yet to react in public.

Internationally, French President Emmanuel Macron called it an "important decision" and US President Joe Biden highlighted the economic opportunities that would be "created by this stability and certainty".

The deal clears the path for a possible Biden visit to Northern Ireland ahead of the 25th anniversary of the US-brokered Good Friday Agreement in April.

UK sources gave an insight into the tense atmosphere surrounding the drawn-out talks, right up to the concluding meeting between Sunak and von der Leyen in Windsor, west of London.

"These things are gradual discussions that continue into the small hours in windowless buildings, with dubious sandwiches with needless amounts of egg involved," one source close to the negotiations said.

"On the day the deal was done some of us went to bed at 2 or 3 AM. People who have been saying this deal was done two weeks ago should speak to our spouses. It's not been sitting there finished."

C.Blake--TNT