N EGOTIATIONS ON THE Northern Ireland protocol are deadlocked. To avert a hard north-south border with Ireland, it keeps the province (though not Great Britain) in the EU ’s single market for goods. Meanwhile the British government may hope to show that the checks supposedly required to stop leakage into the single market are otiose. The biggest risk is that, under the threat of terminating the trade deal, Mr Johnson may revert to his atavistic preference for no deal. He then railroaded the Brexit deal through with the huge majority he won at the end of 2019.

Source: The North Africa Journal November 13, 2021 03:09 UTC