The purpose of the Northern Ireland protocol was meant to be to square the circles of simultaneously protecting the single market and stability in Northern Ireland. But, as I write in the magazine this week, there are signs it is beginning to undermine stability there. The fundamental problem is that Unionists are increasingly against it. The First Minister and DUP leader Arlene Foster tweeted this morning that Northern Ireland must be ‘freed from the protocol’.
We could be in a nightmare situation where direct rule from London had to be imposed to fully implement the protocol
Now, the EU can say that the checks the Unionists are objecting to are in the protocol that the UK government signed, and they would be right. But this would be to forget what the point of the protocol was in the first place.
Unionist discontent matters because the Northern Ireland Assembly’s consent is required for these arrangements every few years.
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