Rishi Sunak inherited three Brexit headaches – sorting out the Northern Ireland protocol, choosing what to do with the Retained EU Law Bill and deciding what to about immigration. The prime minister deserves credit, along with foreign secretary James Cleverly, for thawing the frosty relationship that developed between their predecessors and their EU counterparts. This paved the way for the agreement of the Windsor Framework
12
The Windsor Framework – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
– and the EU will have seen their faith in Sunak’s ability to deliver his party rewarded when the rebellion
13
Windsor Framework: Government wins Brexit deal vote – despite Tory rebellion and DUP anger | Politics News | Sky News
led by two former prime ministers fizzled into a demonstration that the European Research Group (ERG) had been defanged.
Sunak can point to the benefits that have come from the deal. At the press conference on the Windsor Framework, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen raised the prospect that the agreement would open the way for the UK to join the EU’s major research programme – Horizon Europe, which the EU blocked while the UK unilaterally held up implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol. The announcement
14
Prime Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, The Rt Hon Michelle Donelan MP, and The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak MP, UK joins Horizon Europe under a new bespoke deal, 7 September 2023, www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-joins-horizon-europe-under-a-new-bespoke-deal
that the UK now has agreed terms for associate membership of Horizon Europe is a welcome relief to the science and research community which has been lobbying hard for that outcome, valuing the stability of longer-term funding and its boost to international collaboration. The government claims it has negotiated good terms to reflect UK delayed participation.
But while the Windsor Framework has reset the UK’s relations with the EU, Sunak has plenty of Brexit problems that remain unsolved.