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From 9m ago
11.22 GMT
Ursula von der Leyen to meet King when she visits
Windsor to unveil protocol deal with Sunak
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission
president, will meet the King when she is in Windsor today, PA Media is
reporting.
European
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will meet with the King at Windsor
Castle on Monday afternoon, the PA news agency understands.
Von der
Leyen will be in Windsor for a press conference with Rishi Sunak at around
3.30pm where the protocol deal will be unveiled. We do not know yet whether she
will see the King before that, or afterwards.
The meeting
is likely to be hugely controversia because it suggests that No 10 is trying to
create the impression that the protocol deal has royal endorsement. At the
weekend there were even suggestions that Downing Street wants the deal to be
known as the Windsor agreement. Unionists tend to be arch-monarchists, and
there have been suggestions that this is some crude ploy to use the King to win
over the DUP. But the unionists are also inherently suspicious of the
intentions of the UK government, and hyper-alert to signs that they are being
manipulated, and so, if this is the No 10 plan, it is likely to backfire.
At the
weekend, when it was first reported that the King might be involved in some
way, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory Brexiter, said:
If there
were a plan to bring the King in before there is domestic political agreement,
it would border on constitutional impropriety.
Rees-Mogg,
of course, is something of an expert on constitutional impropriety. As leader
of the Commons in 2019, he went to Balmoral to get the Queen to agree to
prorogue parliament – a move subsequently ruled unlawful by the supreme court
because it was done with the intention of limiting the time MPs would have to
debate Brexit.
Getting King to meet EU chief as protocol deal
being announced will 'go down very badly', says former DUP leader
But the
European Commission’s statement about Ursula von der Leyen’s meeting with the
King not being part of the protocol process (see 11.58am) may have come too
late. Arlene Foster, the former DUP leader and former first minister of
Northern Ireland, says that it was “crass” for No 10 to schedule the meeting
and that it will “go down very badly” in Northern Ireland.
31m ago
11.38 GMT
Farage says it is 'disgraceful' Sunak has asked
King to meet von der Leyen, and implies Charles should have refused
That did
not take long. Nigel Farage, the former leader of Ukip and then the Brexit
party, has said it is “absolutely digraceful” that Rishi Sunak is getting the
King involved in the optics around the unveiling of the Northern Ireland
protocol deal.
Interestingly,
in a video message on the topic, Farage does not just criticise Sunak. He seems
to criticise the King too, implying that he should have refused to meet Ursual
von der Leyen. Farage says:
So it is
Northern Ireland protocol day and the unelected Ursula von der Leyen is making
her way to Windsor. Yes, Windsor has been chosen, it’s going to be called the
Windsor agreement, and guess what? The King is going to meet her this
afternoon.
I think
this is absolute disgraceful of Rishi Sunak to even ask the King to get
involved in something that is overtly political in every way.
But I wonder
whether the King had to accept. I wonder whether the King is taking a very big
chance with that section of the electorate, that section of this country, that
actually are his biggest supporters.
The
unionists like the monarchy, they want to like Prince Charles. This is going to
put the most enormous strain on it.
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