In Northern Ireland, Mr. Johnson is beholden to the Democratic Unionist Party, a hard-line Northern Irish Protestant party on which he will depend for a majority in Parliament. It is hard to see how Mr. Johnson can extricate himself from this problem, whose protraction may have a decisive effect on the country’s internal politics. But here too there are problems for Mr. Johnson. (It doesn’t help, of course, that its officials regard Mr. Johnson as a dangerous buffoon.) And as Parliament, which remains intractably divided, is very unlikely to ratify anything Mr. Johnson presents, a No Deal exit looks far from impossible.

Source: New York Times July 22, 2019 04:52 UTC