The blame game between London and Brussels over the Northern Ireland protocol obscures the fact that there are solutions waiting to be found. There are, as I say in the Times today, ways to reform the protocol and better protect the Good Friday Agreement while not threatening the integrity of the single market.
Three changes would render the protocol far more acceptable
Three changes would render the protocol far more acceptable and would better position it to withstand the undoubted pressures it will come under when the EU and UK start to diverge their regulations.
The first of these is a trusted trader scheme for food. This would allow registered suppliers to move goods — including, yes, sausages — from Great Britain to Northern Ireland without checks. The likes of Sainsbury’s can be trusted to make sure that British bangers are bought in the province rather than finding their way to the shelves of shops in Drogheda.
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