Comments by Jacob Rees-Mogg on the Northern Ireland Protocol reveal yet another change of tone in London over the internal UK trade border

The Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has said that London will reform the Northern Ireland Protocol if Brussels does not.

Mr Rees-Mogg told MPs on the EU scrutiny committee: “That is really important to understand because a lot of commentary that says: ‘Well, we signed it and therefore surely we should accept it lock, stock and barrel.’ That’s absolute nonsense.”

He continued: “We signed it on the basis that it would be reformed. And there comes a point at which you say: ‘Well, you haven’t reformed it and therefore we are reforming it ourselves.’ And the United Kingdom is much more important than any agreement that we have with any foreign power.”

The, referring to the Stormont election, he said: “I think I oughtn’t say any more with elections going on.”

This is an extraordinary intervention in all sorts of ways.

What, for example, does Mr Rees-Mogg mean when he says that they signed the deal on the basis that it would be reformed? And what do these comments reveal about the current thinking in Downing Street about implementation of an Irish Sea border that has not yet been fully enforced?

Also, if the UK is much more important than any agreement with a foreign power, then why was this deal signed?

It is Lord Frost who has most often given an answer to this last question, when he points out the circumstances in which the protocol was agreed in late 2019. Parliament had in effect put the government in a bind, and unless checks at the Irish land border were ruled out, there might have been no Brexit.

Even so, it was remarkable that a Conservative and Unionist government made such huge and damaging concessions pertaining to the control of internal trade in part of the UK and seemed so untroubled about it at the time, with almost no internal Tory dissent.

This latest change of tone is welcome but is it for real? We have been here before, only to see London dial down its rhetoric on the EU and reiterate its commitment to the protocol.