Inside Politics: Brexit protocol row looms as Cummings says ‘sooner Johnson goes the better’

Lift off. Jeff Bezos blasted into space yesterday, heralding what could be a new era for tourism beyond the tedious confines of planet Earth. At this stage of another Covid disrupted year a trip to Southend-on-Sea would do – never mind space. Bezos’s rocket ship odyssey is the culmination of 21 years of work, having founded his aerospace company Blue Origin in September 2000. Maybe we’ll have to wait another two decades to see Boris Johnson’s social care plan? It has been delayed again, put off until autumn. Elsewhere, the EU and UK are set for another Brexit row, Priti Patel has agreed a deal with France on Channel crossings and Dominic Cummings is at it again.

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Our political commentator Andrew Grice on what to look out for today:

Not the final prime minister’s questions before the summer recess that Boris Johnson was hoping for: he will answer questions virtually from Chequers while he remains in self-isolation. Helen Whately, the health minister, will make a statement on the NHS likely to cover pay. Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, and David Frost, the Brexit minister, will make statements in the Commons and Lords respectively on changing the Northern Ireland protocol. Ministers quizzed on the select committee corridor will include Priti Patel on the work of the Home Office and Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, on “net zero.”

Coming up shortly:

-Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy on Sky News at 8.05am

-Home Office minister Victoria Atkins on ITV’s GMB at 8.30am

ROW OVER THE ROCK: Following a Covid-heavy start to the week, there is a good old fashioned Brexit row to report this morning. The UK has accused Brussels of failing to negotiate in the “real world” and moving to undermine British sovereignty in an argument over Gibraltar. At a meeting in the EU capital the bloc’s commissioners presented plans to remove checks on people and goods at the land border between Spain and “The Rock”. But the details of the plan caused anger in London as foreign secretary Dominic Raab accused the EU of backtracking on previous promises. The government is concerned that Spain is pushing to extend its influence over the Iberian territory, whose status is a historic bone of contention with Madrid.

SUMMER FROST: It’s likely there will be another row later today when Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary and cabinet minister, Lord Frost, set out the government’s proposals for post-Brexit trading arrangements in Northern Ireland. Earlier in the week Lord Forst warned that the Brexit protocol he helped to negotiate is“not sustainable” and that “all options” remain on the table in terms of resolving the impasse. He is expected to call for radical changes to how the mechanism works. Speaking to BBC Radio 4 this morning Archie Norman, the Marks & Spencer’s chairman, warned some products will be excluded from Northern Ireland’s shelves this Christmas. The EU is unlikely to budge and is expected to tell the UK that following EU food standards would solve a lot of the issues associated with the protocol.

CHANNEL CROSSING CRACKDOWN: Priti Patel has announced a fresh crackdown on migrants crossing the Channel with a £54 million agreement with France to increase patrols to prevent boats reaching the UK. Several of this morning’s papers splash on differing versions of the story, with theMetro describing the move as “Gunboat diplomacy”. The home secretary’s intervention came after a spike in migrants crossing the Channel, with 287 arriving in one day, bringing the total for this year to at least 8,452, surpassing the total for 2020. Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive at Refugee Action, said the growing number of crossings “shows the government’s get-tough-quick schemes do not work”. He added: “Criminal smugglers prey on refugees who have little choice than to put risk their lives in rickety boats because ministers refuse to create more routes to reach safety here. And the government’s cruel anti-refugee bill will do little to stop the boats. It is unworkable, unlawful and will end up an expensive disaster that criminalises people who are simply asking for our help.” He called on the government to create safe routes and welcome 10,000 refugees a year.

PINGDEMIC CHAOS: Ministers have been accused of “flying by the seat of their pants” over Covid controls, as business leaders warned that plans to exempt key staff from self-isolation were “unworkable”. In a day of chaos, Downing Street was twice forced to intervene after a minister suggested both that businesses could tell staff to ignore “pings” asking them to quarantine for 10 days as Covid contacts, and that pubs had been ruled out of the plan for “Covid passports”.

SUSTAINED CAMPAIGN: There is no let up in Cummings’s campaign to remove his old boss from No 10 – that much is clear from his interview with the BBC last night. One of a number of claims made by the former aide during his first one-on-one political interview was that he and others tried to remove Johnson just weeks after helping him to secure an 80-seat majority in the December 2019 election. Asked if he was looking to “hasten” the PM’s departure after he was ousted from the government following an internal power struggle, Mr Cummings said: “Certainly. The sooner he goes the better, for sure.” He added: “Before even mid-January (2020) we were having meetings in Number 10 saying it’s clear that Carrie wants rid of all of us.” Cummings knows how to play the media game and some of the claims he has been making would be difficult to prove or disprove. Responding to all the allegations made by Cummings in the interview, No 10 said: “Political appointments are entirely made by the prime minister.”

LEGACY ROW: Less than a week after Brandon Lewis tried to draw a line in the sand on Troubles-era prosecutions in Northern Ireland, Stormont politicians have rejected his plans for a de-facto amnesty for all crimes committed before 1998. MLAs backed a motion denouncing the controversial plan, which has managed to unite all of Northern Ireland political parties. Although the vote was non-binding, it underlines the strength of feeling on both sides of the community. The motion called for victims and survivors to have a “full, material and central role and input into the content and design of structures to address the legacy of the past”. Speaking in the chamber before the motion was heard Naomi Long, the Alliance Party leader, said “it is desperately sad and utterly shameful we have had to gather here to condemn the UK government’s proposals on legacy.”

NO PLAN: We’ll fix the crisis in social care “once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared,” the PM said from the steps of Downing Street in 2019. Two years later there is still no sign of it. The long-awaited proposals to overhaul the sector have been put off until after parliament’s summer recess, No 10 has said after Johnson, chancellor Rishi Sunak and health secretary Sajid Javid – all of them self-isolating –failed to finalise an announcement. One of the main sticking points in agreeing on a plan was how it would be funded. No 10 declined to deny newspaper reports on Monday night saying that a rise in national insurance payments could be used to fund the reforms, which would breach a Tory manifesto pledge. It would also disproportionately hit young people and low-paid workers, two groups already hammered by the pandemic. How it fits into the PM’s “levelling up” agenda and the Conservative Party’s younger voter problem remains to be seen. Not to mention that the PM is “not attracted” to asking “hard working people” to contribute more. According toThe Times, which reports on the story again today, Sunak and Johnson have already agreed to increase NI payments by 1 percentage point, a penny in the pound, for employers and employees to raise £10 billion.

“At that point we were already saying by the summer either we’ll all have gone from here or we’ll be in the process of trying to get rid of him and get someone else in as prime minister.”

Cummings claims he and other advisers were plotting early ousting of PM

“Given millennials will soon split into two groups who either:

a) get large housing-related inheritances from parents

b) don’t

Then upping a tax targeting younger working age people - in order to help wealthier old people keep their houses - seems bold!”

The Guardian’s media editor Jim Waterson on proposed NI contributions to fund social care reforms

“I’m no super forecaster, but suspect boasting that you were plotting a coup a couple of weeks after the largest election victory in twenty years – while accusing others of veering all over the place - is gonna sound kinda nuts to most people.”

The Sun’s political editor Harry Cole on Cummings’s BBC interview