Reality check: the Northern Ireland protocol isn’t the problem, Brexit is
The Conservative party was happy with Brexit, but not for long. A deal that was great in 2019 is now not great. What could fix it? What change would bring enduring satisfaction? The answer is obvious to anyone familiar with the patterns of English Euroscepticism – nothing. There is no concession big enough, no deal good enough, just as no single fix can end the cravings of a drug addict. The long-term solution is to get sober.
That is not on Liz Truss’s agenda. On Tuesday, the foreign secretary laid before parliament a government plan to assert its own version of the Northern Ireland protocol. That is a threat designed to prod the EU into renegotiating the 2019 withdrawal agreement, which was itself the outcome of a renegotiation made necessary because Theresa May had done a deal that Conservative MPs also didn’t like.
One reason continental leaders don’t want to talk about changes amounting to a new treaty is their certain knowledge that the Tories would be dissatisfied again soon enough. Another reason is that a revised deal would involve trusting Boris Johnson, which EU governments have done before and which no one does twice.
Truss’s account of the problem in Northern Ireland elides frustration with border checksacross the Irish seaand a wider complaint about the residue of EU jurisdictionin Northern Irelandthat Brexit hardliners see as a stain on UK sovereignty. She is egged on by Tory backbenchers who are convinced that the protocol was foisted on Britain; that it amounts to a regulatory land-grab and that its provisions are applied with pernickety spite as punishment by Brussels of an ex-colony that had the temerity to break free.
Believing that version of events requires two psychological traits that come easily to
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