Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will hold crunch talks with the vice president of the European Commission in the coming hours as ministers consider whether to override parts of the post-Brexit deal on Northern Ireland.
Attorney General Suella Braverman is said to have approved the scrapping of swathes of the agreement, giving Boris Johnson legal cover to make the move, despite warnings from Joe Biden's White House and European leaders not to single-handedly meddle with the terms.
On Wednesday, the Prime Minister said the Good Friday Agreement was more important than the Northern Ireland Protocol as he dismissed suggestions of any possible escalatory response from the European Union as "crazy".
