NI protocol: government denies Rishi Sunak wanted King Charles to endorse deal

theguardian.com:

Rishi Sunak was not intending to use King Charles to endorse his much-anticipated deal to end the row with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol, government sources have said.

According to reports, there had been plans for an in-person meeting between the king and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, as part of a trip to the UK to seal the deal on the Brexit trading arrangements.

“It would be wrong to suggest the king would be involved in anything remotely political,” a government source told the PA news agency.

The mooted meeting on Saturday and plan to announce a revised pact, codenamed the Windsor agreement, have now been cancelled, but hope remains for the announcement of an agreement on Monday after Sunak and Von der Leyen had “positive” discussions about the Northern Ireland protocol on Friday.

Buckingham Palace said it would not comment.

Sammy Wilson, the Brexit spokesperson for the Democratic Unionist party (DUP), said any consideration of involving the king was politically “naive”.

“Not only is the prime minister naive if that’s what he was planning to do, but this is a cynical use, or abuse of the king,” Wilson told Sky News on Saturday.

He said it would have meant “dragging the king into a hugely controversial political issue, not just in Northern Ireland but even within his own party”.

The DUP is boycotting power-sharing in Northern Ireland in opposition to the protocol.

The controversy blew up as the government confirmed it had no central database tracking regulatory divergence between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, an issue which goes to the heart of the DUP’s objections to the protocol.

David Jones, a leading member of the pro-Brexit Conservative party European Research Group, says there