Hi, I'm Anouche. I'm Freddie. And I'm Rachel. And this is the New

Statesman's twice-weekly politics podcast. In this episode, we discuss the

aftermath of the New Brexit Agreement and you ask us about Keir Starmer's

missions.

All eyes are on the Democratic Unionist Party now following the government's

announcement of the Winter Framework. This is the new EU-UK agreement on

trading relations between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We won't go

through all of the details of how that changes at the trading

relationship because I'm sure our listeners will have caught up on a lot of

that. But we want to know what happens next. So the DUP leader, Jeffrey Donaldson,

he's been fairly nuanced in his response to it compared to

stauncher figures in his party and also the hard-aligned voices of the

traditional unionist voice party. And the Tory Brexitist response as well has

been generally quite positive. There was glowing coverage in the right

wing press that usually trying to make trouble for Ishi Sunag and support Boris

Johnson's line. Although some MPs, some Tory MPs are saying that they would

only vote through this new arrangement with the DUP's backing. So we're waiting

to hear what they say. Donaldson has said it will take as long as it takes.

Freddie, is it a triumph anyway for Sunag even if power sharing doesn't

return to Northern Ireland just because he's managed to sort out this legal

framework for implementing the protocol without creating the huge

divisions in his party that his predecessors have?

...