Co-conspirators will cast their minds back to Rishi Sunak’s flagship dodgy ‘Windsor Framework’ amendment to the Northern Ireland Protocol, which Brexiters sent up an alarmed bat signal about at the time it was signed. Now Labour is now running a ‘Windsor Framework Review’ – supposedly an objective, independent check up on how the mechanism is operating. Cool, sounds good, anyone checked who’s running the review?
Turns out the review is being run by the notoriously independent Cabinet Office – specifically, Guido is told by well-placed sources, the new EU surrender unit. Oh…
The terms of reference for the review, quietly published last week, state the secretariat will: “operate with full regard to the independence of the Review.” But this team of officials will report to the new Second Permanent Secretary for EU and International Economic Affairs, who will lead Starmer’s surrender squad…
The government is stonewalling parliamentary questions about the number of officials appointed to the surrender unit and to questions about who will be on the selection panel of the Second Permanent Secretary role. Meanwhile, the Windsor Framework Review is being hijacked and used as a trojan horse for taking the UK back into the EU…
Away from these underhand government processes, encumbered with a majority remain-backing and much smaller parliamentary party, there is currently scant intervention from the Conservatives on Labour’s quickly multiplying efforts to roll back and reverse Brexit. Another opportunity for Reform unless the Tories get a grip…
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”