Today was supposed to be the day when Rishi Sunak presented an agreement which resolved the issues over the Northern Ireland Protocol to his cabinet. That was the plan, at least, when the Prime Minister flew to Belfast on Friday for talks with the parties at Stormont.

But today’s cabinet came and went and no agreement was on the long table for ministers to read. The readout from the meeting included a mere holding line: ‘The Prime Minister told cabinet that intensive negotiations with the EU continue on resolving the issues caused by the way the Protocol was being enforced and that he was seeking to address three main areas – safeguarding Northern Ireland’s place within the Union, protecting the Belfast agreement in all its dimensions and ensuring the free flow of trade within the UK internal market’.

The Prime Minister seems rather impatient with Tory MPs who are raising concerns

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has another call with Maros Sefcovic this afternoon, with the pair hoping to continue discussing the Protocol’s unresolved issues. It is now less likely there will be any announcement this week, as the coming days will be dominated by the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Filling the void are a lot of noisy voices in the Tory party. Boris Johnson has been assiduously gathering views from colleagues about whether there would be a big revolt were Sunak to junk his predecessor-but-one’s Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. Home Secretary Suella Braverman warned yesterday that the legislation should stay.

There are also concerns on the Conservative back benches about Sunak forging ahead with a deal that the DUP doesn’t sign up to, with many in the European Research Group of Brexiteer Tory MPs insisting the DUP’s support is important. Others think the Prime Minister could reasonably say that if the DUP continues to refuse to re-enter the Executive because it cannot back a compromise agreement, then it should face the voters of Northern Ireland in fresh Stormont elections and explain this.

At the moment, to those who’ve been in discussions with him over the past 24 hours, the Prime Minister seems rather impatient with Tory MPs who are raising concerns. His impatience is in part driven by the pressure of a deadline that not everyone agrees on. For Sunak, Joe Biden and many others, the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in April is so important symbolically that there needs to be a resolution to the Protocol stand-off before then.

Others disagree: when I interviewed former DUP leader Arlene Foster on the Week in Westminster recently, she described this as an ‘artificial’ deadline. Sunak’s worry will be that not enough of his MPs share his sense of urgency to avoid a revolt.