Rishi Sunak could be facing a Conservative Party revolt of up to 30 MPs who accuse him of “selling out” Brexit by abandoning plans to scrap thousands of EU laws by the end of the year.
The prime minister will welcome Volodymyr Zelensky to the UK today, but if reports are to be believed, he could have a war of his own on his hands after Badenoch announced an amendment to the Retained EU Law Bill.
The business secretary is set to remove the “sunset” of Brussels regulations at the end of 2023 after it was confirmed that only a small proportion of laws could be changed.
It has angered several MPs on the Tory right, with one senior politician saying Sunak could face a backlash even worse than the opposition to the Windsor Framework agreed earlier this year.
A source from the European Research Group of Tory Brexiteers told i: “The problem No 10 has is this comes as the latest in a series of misrepresented pieces of legislation.
“We had the Windsor Framework, which was rushed through without scrutiny on a pack of dubious statements and is clearly unravelling; we then had promises for legislation to stop the boats, which ended up doing no such thing; so why should MPs believe the self-serving reasoning for this latest sell out?”
An MP who is also a member of the ERG said the rebellion would be more extensive than the Windsor Framework rebellion “but less than would be needed” to overturn the Government’s majority.
On Sunday, Senior Brexiteer Sir Bill Cash urged the Government to change course.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the chairman of the Commons European Scrutiny Committee urged Badenoch to delay the Lords legislation by “several weeks” and simply extend the sunset by “a few months”.
“The unelected Lords should not be used to radically change legislation already passed with a big majority in the elected House of Commons,” he said. “Nor should the Commons’ own specialist committee be bypassed in this arrogant way.”
It comes amid wider signs of discontent at Mr Sunak’s leadership, with former home secretary Priti Patel telling i at the weekend the Prime Minister was presiding over “managed decline” of his party.
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