Windsor Framework and Stormont brake: Northern Ireland minister Steve Baker urges Boris Johnson not to risk becoming ‘a pound shop Nigel Farage’

The two former prime ministers are to vote against Rishi Sunak’s Brexit deal in Parliament today.

Speaking to broadcasters at Westminster, Mr Baker said: “Both of them should be backing the Windsor Framework today.

“What I would say is they are both better than this. We’ve partly reached this point thanks to Liz Truss setting the process in train.

“And today’s measures are better, of course, than the protocol that Boris Johnson put in place, a protocol which he spoke about and those things turned out not to be accurate.

“So he has a choice: he can be remembered for the great acts of statecraft that he achieved or he can risk looking like a pound shop Nigel Farage.

“I hope he chooses to be remembered as a statesman.”

Mr Baker said the UK Government would not be relying on Opposition MPs to win a vote on the Stormont brake element of the Windsor Framework.

The Northern Ireland minister told broadcasters at Westminster: “There is no question of it going through on Labour votes. It will be going through because it is the right thing for Northern Ireland.”

Mr Baker also addressed arguments made by allies of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss that the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill — legislation that would have unilaterally overwritten parts of the Brexit treaty with Brussels — should not have been dropped.

“The Protocol Bill would have put in place a red and a green channel for goods going to Northern Ireland,” he said, when asked if he had a message for former prime ministers Mr Johnson and Ms Truss.

“But in using that Bill, we would wreck our relations with the European Union and damage our standing internationally.

“Now that was a price we were willing to pay to get just the kind of arrangements we now have in the Windsor Framework,” Mr Baker said, as he urged the pair to vote with the Government.