Government has chance to deal with the poison of the Northern Ireland Protocol

This week is likely to be important for the Northern Ireland Protocol and the government at Westminster. The Agriculture Minister, Edwin Poots, is expected to order officials to stop checking goods at Northern Ireland’s ports.

The DUP has opposed the Irish Sea border consistently. The protocol creates many constitutional issues, but the chief practical problem is that goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland have been subjected to onerous checks and paperwork.

After a legal challenge by the loyalist campaigner, Jamie Bryson, Mr Poots tabled a paper asking the Executive to endorse the current arrangements. His party and the UUP were expected to vote against this document, in effect exercising a veto on the sea border.

However, Sinn Fein blocked any discussion of the paper and the DUP now says that its minister is obliged to stop checks anyway, because they are unlawful.

This action puts the government in a tricky predicament. Last week, Boris Johnson described the protocol as ‘insane’ and the Foreign Secretary Liz Truss claimed it must be ‘fixed’. The secretary of state is entitled to overrule Poots, but that approach would risk being seen to endorse a sea border that the government has acknowledged needs to go.

At the same time, the prime minister is preoccupied with the impending publication of Sue Gray’s report into parties at N0 10 and there are suggestions that war could soon break out in Ukraine. A row about the protocol may even provide some distraction from these issues, which are sure to dominate the media.

The Stormont Executive is on the brink of an enormous row and we are approaching a potentially angry, contentious election campaign. There has never been a better time for the government to deal with the political poison that the protocol has injected into our politics.

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