The Northern Ireland protocol is up for discussion. Again

BREXIT BATTLES are back. And not surprisingly the biggest is over Northern Ireland, the hardest issue in previous negotiations. It was supposedly solved in the withdrawal treaty of 2020 by the Northern Ireland protocol, which averts a hard border with the Republic of Ireland by keeping the North in the EU’s single market and customs union for goods, even though Great Britain is out of both. But that inevitably means border and customs controls between the two, in the Irish Sea. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) complains that 20% of EU border checks in the first quarter were in Northern Ireland, and wants the protocol scrapped. In July the British government proposed instead a radical revision that would dispense with almost all controls.