Jeffrey Donaldson has threatened to collapse Stormont unless the Northern Ireland protocol is thrown out.
Donaldson’s policy problem is that no one in either the British government or the European Union envisages a world without some kind of Northern Ireland-related treaty between them. David Frost’s recent speech about the protocol’s future was largely briefed, covered and received in the UK, Ireland and across the EU as a brusque and robust position. But the reality, as Denis Staunton noted over at the Irish Times, was how much Frost conceded and how the British government has implicitly accepted that its negotiating position is weak.
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