The Triumph Before the Tragedy

Rishi Sunak is probably the most politically flat-footed Prime Minister since ... Liz Truss. But not everything has to be 4D chess. Simple crudity can and does work. In selling his Northern Ireland Brexit deal, there were two very clumsy, clod-hopping moves that made Gordon Brown look the picture of subtlety. We had Sunak's address in the Commons this evening. Showing an uncharacteristic appreciation of his backbenchers and their peccadilloes, he sold his deal with the EU as an exercise in cutting red tape. The successful conclusion of the negotiations, he said, deleted 1,700 pages of EU law. That sounds good to them, and looks good if you want to style out the rest of this calamitous Tory government as something of a "reformer" who doused hundreds and hundreds of regulations in petrol.

The second was a bit too much on the nose, even for Sunak. We noted yesterday the aborted weekend meeting between the King and EU president Ursula von der Leyen, and how Brexiteers and the DUP cried themselves a river over it. Associating the King with the deal was an obvious attempt at emotional blackmail against two political tendencies who define themselves in relation to the Crown. It was therefore not enough for the tea and tiffin to actually go ahead this Monday afternoon. To almost dare them to vote against the deal it has now been christened the 'Windsor Framework'.

What a clunker of a strategy, but it seems to have worked. Most of the Brexity voices have made emollient noises, with the ERG promising to look carefully at the text of the deal. Even the DUP aren't united in intransigence. Boris Johnson, who kept the running sore of the Northern Ireland Protocol open purely for political posturing purposes has kept a low profile and chose to stay away from the Commons. He's decided not to lead an assault on the deal. With Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and perhaps the SNP all backing the Prime Minister, the Tory right, who've been flexing of late might not choose this as their hill to stand on either. Sunak, therefore, has the first genuine triumph of his premiership. And one that, ultimately, will do nothing to save his government.