Threats to the agreement between the UK and the EU are coming from all quarters. This is a time for cool heads and practical compromises
The Brexit agreement’s Northern Ireland protocol is an unhappy compromise. It attempts, at one and the same time, to embody the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union as well as its treaty obligation to uphold the Northern Ireland peace process. It guarantees the soft Irish land border that was devised to end the Troubles in 1998 in return for compulsory post-Brexit checks on a range of plant and food-related goods travelling between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
The protocol therefore attempts to fuse together two different approaches to borders and sovereignty, as well as to Ireland itself. It is not surprising that, throughout the Brexit process, these have proved hard to reconcile, first in the negotiations in 2017-18, then in the parliamentary confrontations of 2018-19. The implementation of the protocol has long been an argument simmering under the surface, waiting to erupt.
