Alliance Party Northern Ireland

And three, the great political row that has dominated Northern Irish politics since Brexit—over the so-called protocol establishing new border controls—was ...

“The simple reality is if you want Northern Ireland to work, we need a new offer on the protocol and a new historic compromise,” says Paul Bew, a professor of Irish politics at Queen’s University in Belfast who was intimately involved in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement. The final compromise itself matters less than the fact that everybody—the EU, Britain, the Republic of Ireland, and the two (or three) sides in Northern Ireland—must be equally unhappy with it. Northern Ireland can feel like a land where raw power and violence still matter in a way that should not be the case in a modern state. If you’re confused, that is because the whole issue is so fiendishly complicated that nobody has managed to solve it in the six years since Britain voted to leave the EU. Under the terms of this agreement, a trade-and-customs border was erected between Northern Ireland and mainland Great Britain (that is, within the same country), in order to avoid one being imposed between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (that is, between two different states that share the same island). Ever since, Northern Ireland’s unionist parties have fiercely resisted this protocol, arguing that it is unfair because it prioritizes the wishes of one community in Northern Ireland (nationalists) over the other (unionists). In Thursday’s elections two things happened, each pulling in the opposite direction. (The truth is, neither the U.K. nor the EU has ever fully implemented the protocol: The British government has unilaterally extended “grace periods” for businesses to avoid disruption, while the EU has agreed not to implement parts of the protocol that would restrict the flow of medical supplies from Britain to Northern Ireland.) Yet because it has not been implemented in full, the situation has never become so intolerable that anyone has actually changed it. As of today, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party, the most successful unionist bloc in Thursday’s election, have six months to set up a new power-sharing executive (a Northern Irish government, essentially) before the British government imposes direct rule from London and sets a date for another round of elections to break the deadlock. In fact, in Northern Ireland there can be no Alexander—and that is the point. The fear, though, is that the situation cannot last much longer. “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” asks Alice of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” replies the cat. Under the Good Friday Agreement, power must be shared between the two largest designations elected to the Northern Irish Assembly, which has thus far been made up of blocs identifying as unionist and nationalist. And three, the great political row that has dominated Northern Irish politics since Brexit—over the so-called protocol establishing new border controls—was tested with the public, and while those that oppose it have hardened in their opposition, a majority voted for parties that are fine with it. While more people are now voting for the third-way Alliance Party, which argues that other bread-and-butter issues matter more than unionism or nationalism, for now, Northern Ireland’s political and constitutional reality remains unchanged.