LONDON: UK lawmakers endorsed on Wednesday Mar 22 a crucial part of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's post-Brexit deal with the EU to overhaul Northern Irish trade rules despite a rebellion by ex-leader Boris Johnson and other Conservative eurosceptics.
The vote on the Stormont brake, which gives Northern Irish lawmakers an effective veto over new EU rules being implemented in the UK province, won the backing of 515 MPs, with just 29 opposing.
The new Windsor Framework was agreed with Brussels last month, and the government can move forward with Foreign Secretary James Cleverly to talk about its roll-out at a meeting Friday with EU Vice-President Maros Sefcovic.
In a rebuke to Sunak that could have implications for his political authority, 22 Tory MPs - including former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss - opposed the brake, while another 48 refused to vote.
The refusal to support the government threatens to cause deep divisions within the governing party over Brexit.
MPs from Northern Ireland's largest pro-UK party, the Democratic Unionist Party DUP, voted against the brake, suggesting that Sunak will struggle to get the party to resume power sharing in Belfast.
The Stormont brake is a key part of the new framework, which aims to reset strained ties between Britain and the bloc.
It is hoped that the pact will lead to a restart of the devolved government in Northern Ireland, after the DUP collapsed the executive last year over its opposition to existing post-Brexit trade rules.
Northern Ireland is still in the European customs union and single market because of the need to keep an open border with EU member Ireland to the south as part of a peace deal in 1998.
With the rest of the UK out of the EU, that has caused headaches on how to protect the single market on goods heading across the Irish Sea and made a united Ireland more likely, according to unionists.
Jeffrey Donaldson, DUP leader, said the framework did not solve its concerns about Northern Ireland's ability to trade with the rest of the UK.
That is the bottom line for us, he told MPs during a 90-minute debate before the vote.
I can't commit to the government that we will restore the political institutions until that is resolved.
It is what I want to do, but we need to get this right. Earlier, Johnson, whose much-anticipated parliamentary grilling about the Partygate controversy was paused so that MPs could vote, said the framework was not acceptable as he pledged to oppose it.
He urged the government to stick with legislation he helped craft that would unilaterally disregard existing EU rules in Northern Ireland until Brussels agreed acceptable alternatives.
The draft law, introduced last year, prompted the bloc to threaten reprisals and a damaging trade war, further souring relations.
The European Research Group ERG of the Conservative Party has criticised the brake, calling it practically useless after an analysis by its own legal experts.
The group - thought to include around a dozen Tory lawmakers, down from triple that number several years ago - urged its members to vote against it.
The main Labour opposition had said it would support the measure, but its approval was never in doubt.