It is not the Northern Ireland protocol that is causing friction – but Brexit itself

In the end everyone must realise that Brexit will never get done until London and Brussels can agree not only on the treaty they signed, but how it is meant to operate in practice.

This seems to be better understood in the European Union than in the present British government, because unpicking the entire UK-EU withdrawal agreement and the EU-UK trade and cooperation agreement – the Brexit deal – is something that might well lead to unintended consequences for both sides.

There is no justification for Britain abrogating sections of the Northern Ireland protocol, except within sharply defined circumstances, and reneging on a treaty solemnly entered into. So the EU is right to refuse to renegotiate a deal that took so long and so much energy and anguish only a few years ago.

Likewise, there is no great point in the EU pretending that everyone in Northern Ireland is happy with the way the Northern Ireland protocol is working out.

It is perfectly obvious that, after the recent elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, the peace process is in jeopardy. The Democratic Unionist Party is holding the power-sharing government to ransom, recklessly, and refusing to allow the assembly to operate as a talking shop by declining to help select a speaker.

It bears repeating that the DUP would have more chance of making the protocol work from within the government of Northern Ireland than outside it. Instead, they are demanding it be “scrapped”. That is not realistic.

The devil really is in the detail, and sooner or later the detail of implementation will have to be made as practical as possible. This will require a dose of realism in Belfast, Dublin, London and Brussels and at times such as this, with peace and stability in peril, Washington needs to be involved – and is getting involved.

President Biden is proud of his Irish ancestry, takes an intense interest in Irish affairs, and has made his views forcefully known to anyone interested. He thinks Brexit was a mistake, and supports Dublin and Brussels. It hardly needs pointing out that the already remote chances of a UK-US free trade deal will be set back even further if the White House considers that the British government is playing games with peace.

Hence the mission to the US Congress by Conor Burns, the prime minister’s special representative to the US on the NI protocol and minister of state for the province. The British government is taking care to make its own case about the damage the protocol is causing in Northern Ireland. The fact, though, is that it is not the protocol that is causing the frictions – but Brexit itself.

Now, a delegation of US congressmen and congresswomen is crossing the Atlantic to visit London, Brussels, Dublin and Belfast. At the end of their meetings they may have a better appreciation of the problems, though perhaps no more able than anyone else to suggest answers.

President Biden is also due to appoint a special secretary of his own. It can do no harm, and with the prospect of American investment and transatlantic trade deals with the UK and the EU as incentives, the president’s emissary will have a chance of brokering some kind of deal. It is damaging, and surprisingly ignorant, for Lord Frost to tell the president to butt out: “We don’t need lectures from others about the peace process and the Good Friday Agreement.”

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Lord Frost seems to have forgotten the vital roles president Bill Clinton and senator George Mitchell played in the peace process.

In any event, the British government and the DUP argue that the protocol is now undermining peace and the Belfast Good Friday Agreement (GFA) – even though Mr Johnson argued the opposite when he signed the Brexit deal and the protocol. In fact, the protocol was supposed to be the answer to the problem of where the EU-UK economic border should be. A border down the Irish Sea remains the least bad solution.

Dublin, Brussels and Sinn Fein argue that the problem is Brexit itself, and that the alternative to the protocol is a border on the island of Ireland, a rather more egregious violation of the GFA. The basic, logical, legal and political incompatibility of Brexit and the GFA has been apparent since the 2016 referendum campaign, and no one has yet been able to resolve it to the mutual satisfaction of all.

Any Americans getting involved in the process would do well to remember how difficult it was and how long it took for Mr Clinton and Mr Mitchell to bridge historic divides and at least partially reconcile ancient enemies. The good news is that they did, though, succeed in the end.