Who is new Tory Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker and what did he say to so upset unionists?

Steve Baker became MP for Wycombe in 2010, a seat just outside London that’s been in Tory hands since the 1950s.

He was made Northern Ireland minister at the start of September 2022, under NI secretary Chris Heaton-Harris.

In 2018/19, he was chair for several months of the European Research Group, a Eurosceptic group of Tory MPs.

He has been a minister once before, in 2017/18, when he held the post of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the EU for a year.

He quit that post because he was unhappy at the government’s handling of Brexit, saying Number 10 was “absolutely unequal to the task”.

He had campaigned for Vote Leave in 2016, appearing with Boris Johnson next to his red Brexit battle bus, and Conservative peer Lord Horam once said of him that “there is no harder Brexiteer”.

In April this year he was among the Tory MPs who called publicly for Johnson to quit, and considered running for the Tory leadership himself, but ultimately declined.

Back in March of this year Mr Baker had demanded the triggering of Article 16, saying: “The protocol was always unfinished business. That’s why some of us, when we backed it, said it was a tolerable path to a great future...

“Surely we all now agree that the protocol is not doing what it promised.”

On Sunday he told the Tory conference: “As one of the people who perhaps acted with the most ferocious determination to get the UK out of the EU, I think we have to bring some humility to this situation.

“It is with humility that I want to accept and acknowledge I and others did not always behave in a way which encouraged Ireland and the EU to trust us... I’m sorry about that.”

Then on RTE yesterday he said “If I have to eat a bit of humble pie in order to restore broken relationships to get that done, well, I’m happy to eat a bit of humble pie. I’m sorry that relations between the UK and Ireland have been soured by the Brexit process.

“And I recognise that as the leader of the sort of 28, if I can put it in those terms, who rejected Theresa May’s deal three times, that caused enormous amounts of anxiety.”

More from this reporter on Brexit and the Protocol:

• Ex-Northern Ireland Secretary suggests ‘there may be grounds’ soon to call a referendum on Irish re-unification

• ‘The tentacles of the Northern Ireland Protocol reach way beyond mere cargo and ports – and you could see the problems coming from outer space’

• Public body declares that in spite of Brexit Northern Ireland must ape the EU’s laws on human rights – or it will launch court fights