PM Sunak In Northern Ireland As Deal w/EU On Protocol Seen In Near Future

UK PM Rishi Sunak is in Belfast, Northern Ireland today to outline to political parties there what is speculated to be a forthcoming deal between the UK and EU on reform to the Northern Ireland protocol within the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. European Commission VP Maros Sefcovic has also hastily convened a meeting of the 27 member state ambassadors this morning, giving further credence to speculation that the announcement of a deal is approaching fast.

• Simon Usherwood, a politics professor at the Open University: "Sunak has kept to his predecessors' approach of trying to keep very few people in the loop about talks: UK-EU and UK internal talks are highly separated until deals land and then selling goes overtime. [...]Separating like this might make things easier at start, as you have fewer POVs to take into account, but deals have to be implemented, so you need buy-in to make things work on ground. Sunak risks either a political stand-off from NI parties or his backbench or someone pointing out the practical difficulties"
• Usherwood: "Next up, content. This deal isn't going to "solve" Protocol issues, just reduce problems and open a path to more negotiations. All indications are that deal will be within existing texts of WA and TCA, so this is about wiggle room, not recasting. [...]. That's not intrinsically a problem, but it does point up that Brexit is a process not an event [...] So expectation management is in order. [...]"