The DUP would be foolish to reject Sunak’s Brexit deal

Rishi Sunak and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen hailed a ‘decisive breakthrough’ as they unveiled their updated version of the Northern Ireland Protocol deal, but will it wash with the people of Northern Ireland?

For those just back from Mars, the Protocol was an attempt to reconcile the United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union with the indigestible fact of a land border between the two jurisdictions on the island of Ireland. It was incorporated into the Brexit withdrawal agreement after months of torturous negotiations. The Protocol was designed to enable Northern Ireland to trade freely with the EU market and so eliminate the need for physical border controls that some politicians argued, with unseemly relish, might allow terrorism to flourish on a frontier already painted with blood.

The price for this access was that goods coming to Northern Ireland from Great Britain would be subject to EU inspection. This imposition was seized on by Unionists as a ‘sea border’ that conferred semi-detached status on the province’s place within the Union.