Ever since Brexit was on the table, there has always been the niggling matter of how to treat Northern Ireland. If Brexit meant leaving the customs union and effecting the U.K.’s own trade arrangements then it could mean introducing a hard customs border to the island of Ireland.
Theresa May, and Boris Johnson after her, immediately accepted that something needed to be different about the way Northern Ireland was treated. So they negotiated the Northern Ireland Protocol, which effectively puts a customs border within the United Kingdom itself, in the Irish Sea. This also has the effect of breaking the connection between Northern Irish voters and their economic governance.
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