A chara, – It didn’t take long for the bully-boy tactics of loyalism to emerge in the unionist campaign to undermine the Northern Ireland protocol. The Taoiseach Micheál Martin seems to have been taken by surprise, describing it as a sinister and ugly development.
Arlene Foster is clearly under pressure from the hardliners in the DUP who pushed for Brexit in the first place.
While condemning the threats against inspection staff at Larne port, she has called for “the immediate removal of the Northern Ireland protocol”. What does she propose to replace the protocol with?
Ursula von der Leyen, for her part, gave the loyalists an open invitation with the European Commission’s decision to invoke Article 16 to stop Covid vaccines entering the North.
It is perhaps revealing that, barely a month into its existence, the protocol has already come under pressure from both ends – the unionists who see themselves as being gradually prised out of the UK and into a united Ireland, and the EU political elite, who are determined to prevent any leakage out of their single market.
Is it just teething problems, as some would suggest, or does it point to inherent structural contradictions in the protocol itself, which attempts to square the circle of leaving Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom while keeping it apparently in the EU at the same time?
The time may not be right for a debate on a united island and a Border poll – one wonders if the time would ever be right – but unionism and nationalism alike may be forced to have a real and honest debate about how to deal with the political and economic realities they face at this crossroads where they now find themselves because of Brexit.
The objective should be to find a democratic agreement on the way forward which respects all sides. – Is mise,
JOHN
GLENNON,
Hollywood,
Co Wicklow.