THE UK’S NORTHERN Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris has warned the DUP that there can be “no renegotiating” of Rishi Sunak’s new Brexit deal with Brussels, despite the party’s demand for changes.

Following talks with Northern Ireland party leaders, Heaton-Harris confirmed the Windsor Framework agreement will be formally adopted by the UK and EU tomorrow and will become international law shortly afterwards.

It follows yesterday’s Commons vote which saw MPs overwhelmingly back regulations to implement a key pillar of the framework, the Stormont Brake, by 515 votes to 29.

The Stormont Brake covers post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland.

The DUP, however, opposes the agreement and is refusing to return to powersharing at Stormont unless there are further changes.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Drive Time today, DUP MLA Jim Shannon said he took issue with the Framework in the context of “the constitutional position of Northern Ireland in relation to the United Kingdom and Great Britain.

“We are devolutionists and wish to see the the Stormont assembly up and running, [but] at this moment in time there isn’t that legally binding guarantee that we see within the Windsor framework. Chris Heaton Harris says [there] is but our legal opinion says it’s not.

“We have to get something satisfies our constitutional position.”

When it was put to Shannon that the DUP was holding Northern Ireland “to ransom”, he responded that “Sinn Féin held it all to ransom for three years”, referring to the previous collapse of Stormont due to Sinn Féin pulling out of powersharing”.

‘No renegotiating’

Following his meeting with Heaton-Harris at Hillsborough Castle, the Northern Ireland Secretary’s official residence, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said it remained no more than a “sticking plaster” solution.

However Heaton-Harris told reporters that the British government was committed to the new arrangements and to making them work with the EU.

“There is no renegotiating of that deal,” he said.

“The two sides to those negotiations which have concluded, the UK Government and the European Union, are going to make the framework work.

“So there is nothing more to get out of that conversation. It is done.”

Donaldson nevertheless insisted that he would be seeking further talks with Sunak and Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.

“I am not interested in sticking plasters, they don’t work and I’m afraid there is in the Windsor Framework an element of the sticking plaster,” he said.

“It won’t work, it will not deliver the long-term stability and prosperity that Northern Ireland needs.”

The continuing stand-off suggests the prospects for a return to powersharing at Stormont in time for the 25th anniversary next month of the Good Friday Agreement remain bleak.

The executive and the Assembly have been suspended since the DUP walked out last year in protest at the way the Northern Ireland Protocol negotiated by Boris Johnson was operating.

Sunak has insisted the framework deal “fixes” the problems with the protocol but Donaldson has said “fundamental” issues remain.

The framework will be formally adopted by Cleverly and European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic at a meeting in London of the Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee.

Additional reporting by Emer Moreau