Former chancellor Rishi Sunak has been accused by allies of Boris Johnson of planning to take a soft line with Brussels in the dispute over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trade deals if he becomes prime minister.
Sunak, who currently has the most support among MPs in the Conservative leadership race, on Sunday sought to reassure Eurosceptic Tories that he would take a hard line on Brexit and “capitalize on the freedoms” it offers.
But Johnson’s supporters are determined to stop Sunak, who they say betrayed the prime minister, and are now mounting a sustained information campaign against him.
Many are backing Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, who is struggling to gain momentum as the leadership race enters its final parliamentary stages. This week, Tory MPs will vote to finalize a two-person shortlist from which party members will choose the winner. Johnson’s successor will be announced on September 5.
A minister close to Johnson said Sunak would change policy on the Northern Ireland Protocol – a key part of the prime minister’s Brexit deal with the EU, which outlines the region’s trade regime – and seek a compromise with Brussels to ease the economic damage. which the dispute causes .
The minister said: “Rishi will want to do a quick deal with the EU and move on.”
Boris blames Rishi for the downfall of his premiership. This is disloyalty of the highest order
The minister also suggested Sunak would take a softer line with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine because of the former chancellor’s concerns about the economic impact of the war.
That claim was strongly denied by Sunak’s team, which said he had “led the way” in implementing sanctions against Moscow.
A Johnson ally said Sunak last year opposed Johnson’s proposals to unilaterally ease border checks on goods arriving at Northern Ireland ports from mainland Britain by activating Article 16 of the protocol, which allows some of his demands to be suspended.
“We were going to activate Article 16 last year and [Lord David] Frost would not have resigned if No 10 had his way,” the ally added, referring to the former Brexit secretary who left the post last December.
“Rishi raised objections about the economic impact, which meant we just couldn’t do it.”
The government is now pushing legislation through parliament that would repeal key parts of the Northern Ireland protocol. Sunak said he would persevere with the bill.
Sunak’s allies said Johnson was also nervous about using the “nuclear option” to trigger Article 16 of the protocol last December, and the cabinet agreed it was the wrong time to escalate the row with Brussels.
The European Commission has blocked British scientists from participating in the EU’s €95bn Horizon research program in retaliation and previously warned that if the UK unilaterally rewrote Johnson’s Brexit deal, it risked igniting a trade war with the bloc.
But the UK government said the protocol undermined the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of conflict in Northern Ireland, and some businesses complained of unnecessary red tape.
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak: Johnson’s supporters are determined to stop Sunak from taking the top job © Andrew Parsons/10 Downing Street
Johnson’s allies have repeatedly attacked Sunak, calling him variously a “traitor” and a “snake” after he became one of the first members of the government to quit this month in protest at the prime minister’s leadership.
“Boris blames Rishi for the downfall of his prime minister,” said one Johnson supporter. “This is disloyalty of the highest order.”
Sunak tried to defuse the row with the outgoing prime minister by praising Johnson’s achievements, but ran into escalating attacks from teams of rival leadership contenders.
The former chancellor, who secured the support of 101 Tory MPs in the final round of voting last week, is expected to make the final shortlist of two to be presented to party members.
Sunak knows some party campaigners are suspicious of his tax hikes, his perceived disloyalty to Johnson and Brexit, despite the fact that the former chancellor – unlike Truss – voted to leave in the 2016 referendum.
“I strongly believe I made the right decision by backing Leave,” Sunack wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, adding that the UK would be better off outside the EU with its “low growth, bureaucratic mindset”.
He said that as prime minister he would set up a department to implement Brexit and that by the next general election he would have “devolved or reformed all the EU legislation, bureaucracy and red tape that is still in our statute book and holding back economic growth”. .
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But Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit options minister and a Johnson ally who last week branded Sunak a “socialist” because of his record on raising taxes, said the Treasury had not been so keen to repeal EU law while he was chancellor.
Lucy Fraser, financial secretary to the Treasury, said in a letter obtained by Bloomberg that it is not possible to simply rip out the EU’s retained laws – or Reul – which have been an integral part of British tax policy for four decades. She added in the letter, written last month, that she continues to have “serious concerns about the complete cessation of Reul’s taxes.”
Rees-Mogg said: “Rishi’s position has changed quite quickly, but a reversal of EU law is always welcome.”
A spokesman for Sunak’s campaign said: “The former chancellor and the Treasury were fully behind the goal of removing Reul, it was a question of the best mechanism for doing so.” The Treasury wanted specific legislation to remove Reul in the form of future finance bills .
Meanwhile, some Tory MPs believe former equalities minister Kemi Badenoch, currently fourth in the leadership race after last week’s vote, will end up backing Sunak.
Badenoch has clashed during the contest with Trade Secretary Penny Mordaunt, currently runner-up, particularly on the issue of transgender rights.
Mordaunt was accused of supporting gender identity while she was the minister responsible for the policy. She denied this.
Some Tory MPs believe Badenoch is trying to prevent Mordaunt from helping Sunack because he would prefer to be on the final two-man list with Truss, who is currently third in the leadership race. Badenoch denied this and said he was in the race “to win it”.
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