Pre-Brexit, the Good Friday Agreement allowed unionists to enjoy the sense of being an integrated part of the UK, with no border between themselves and GB, and nationalists to enjoy being an integrated part of Ireland, with no border between NI and RoI.
The NI protocol within the Withdrawal Agreement, agreed by the UK government, constitutes a partial economic border between NI and GB. Hence loyalists rioting. This agreement was the inevitable consequence of the govt deciding to interpret the referendum as a hard Brexit.
Leaving the customs union and the single market makes a border either between NI and GB or between NI and RoI inevitable.
The Leave narrative switched from 'we will never allow a NI-GB border and there will only be one between I/NI if the EU put one up' to 'this protocol thing has been forced on us by the EU we must get rid of it or not apply it'.
During the campaign, Leave lies included that there would not be a need for a border, because 'frictionless trade' and 'access to the single market' would not necessitate one or mean you noticed one, and that worries about violence beginning again were Project Fear.
The loyalist grievance is not *just* a symbolic one. They must have seen the effect it has had on internet and real shopping, and on business to business supply lines from GB.
Leaving the SM/CU wasn't a necessary consequence of the Brexit referendum. The narrow margin of victory, + leading campaigners either supporting the SM/CU, or lying about the consequences of leaving them, could have argued for staying within.
It is not such a leap to view the 56%-44% Remain vote in NI as being attributable to voters there understanding the trouble that Brexit would bring, and the convenience of erasing economic borders within the EU's SM/CU.
It may be more than a historical anecdote to observe that prominent government members like @michaelgove did not accept the Good Friday Agreement and presumably therefore were well aware that a hard Brexit could undo it, and would have postively welcomed that consequence.
Some quotes from Gove's pamphlet 'The Price of Peace' are lifted out here: joe.co.uk/news/michael-g… and the original is here amazon.co.uk/Price-Peace-Mi…
On this view, at least some on the Brexit side viewed the unravelling of the peace process not as an unlikely consequence, or one that could be dealt with somehow if it arose, but as a welcome corollary of leaving the EU's orbit.
The govt was shown to be not particularly precious about what they stand for - eg refusing the protocol until they simply accept it. Rewinding, iti would've been within that kind of strategic rubric to say 'look NI [and Sco] didn't want to leave so Brexit= continued SM/CU.
Some new settlement is going to have to be forged. And there is no magic possible. You cannot have a hard Brexit, and no border between NI/RoI and no border between NI/GB.
Forging it is going to require an arbiter that isn't assumed to be acting explicitly or subversively for one side against the other. The GFA was enabled by 2 changes of guard, first Thatcher for Major, then Tories for New Labour, + the involvement of international statespersons.
The current govt is not a great candidate for forging a settlement given its repeated untruths about the implications of Brexit, leaving the SM/CU, the NI protocol, who is responsible for it and many other topics.
That is, it is not to be trusted. On the other hand, since it might not care about very much at all, and has shown itself able to bend the Brexit brand to whatever is strategically necessary, perhaps it could simply buckle, drag us back towards the SM/CU.
An entity with political principles and principles of truth telling would have to reckon with the mythical pro hard Brexit median voter, but this one could simply lie and say nothing much had changed and that we have still got 'control'.
There are 3 broad principles of solution to the bind we are in. 1) reversing our exit from the SM/CU. And 2 others. It's ironic that the 2 others are not going to happen!
2) is of course that Ireland also leaves the EU SM/CU and forms a single market and customs union with the UK. It's not hard to see why that is not going to happen. A few centuries of colonial oppression, for one thing.
3) is that there comes into being a global single market and customs union! The irony here is that this is related to the 'global Britain' and 'bucaneering free trade' words you will sometimes read in things emitted by the Leave side. Which of course will not happen.
And it won't happen of course because such things require 'giving back control' over regulation [to create the single market] adjudication [to create supra-national institutions and rules to arbitrate disputes] and the likelihood it will mean more freedom of movement.
This is just 'ironic' and not a plain contradiction because the 'Global Britain'/'bucaneering free trade' stuff is, from what I can tell, mostly lies, or just fantasy bullshit by those who sincerely are misled by terms like 'free trade agreement' into thinking they = free trade.
One of the grimly interesting aspects of this part of the Brexit crisis takes us back to a critique of technocratic objections to Brexit on the grounds of it imposing economic costs...
At the time, those of us pointing out those costs were often met with 'you don't get it, this isn't just about £, it's about peoples other non pecuniary hopes and desires, for, well, taking back control'.
[Most of that was bullshit too, in the sense that the same interlocutors would in other discourse simply deny there were any economic costs, or explain great benefits that would ensue, based on bad economics, but, that aside..]
The NI problem is an example where the thing that itches the political problem with Brexit is the very thing that also causes the economic costs of it in general. The economics *are* the politics!
Forgot to say why it was [supemely] ironic that 2) Ireland leaving EU and forming CU/SM with us was not going to happen and if it wasn't so tragic it would be grimly amusing....
What's stopping it is the centuries of colonial oppression and lately presumption regarding Ireland. The very strain at the core of Tory Leave is the very thing that is stopping them from getting what they want.
[Ends. Others more qualified like @syrpis are writing great threads on this that I want to read and you should too.]
Sorry, like a Boxer falsely retiring.... it is unfair to single out Tory Leave here. One has to wonder at the Labour leave strand too [I don't mean bonkers Kate Hoey, I mean the 'we need to listen and hard Brexit is it' lot].
In their case, since there is much more of an acceptance of the GFA and the UK's culpability in the 'Troubles', you have to judge it to be sheer brainlessness, or political helplessness in the headlights of the Red Wall Brexity voter.
[That really is the end. Please subscribe to my.... well, no, just follow and give me hell if I get stuff wrong].

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More from @t0nyyates

8 Apr
Labour calling for an economic impact assessment of the TCA Brexit deal is a tactic that took me by surprise. It's not consistent with what I thought was their approach which was to put fingers in the ears about Brexit and move on.
Obvs such an assessment is not going to be made to happen by the government. But raising the issue, knowing the call will not be heeded, naturally leads to saying 'and of course they don't because they fear it will show that there are very large economic costs...' etc.
But doing that leads them back where technocrats like me [not quite the right word for unemployed economist] got stuck pre-referendum, into territory that cut no electoral ice.
Read 5 tweets
7 Apr
Twitter @Dannythefink in one conversation on policing statues brands those who disagree him either as 'thoughtless', ideological, or 'dishonest.

Podcast Danny, author of 'Everything in moderation', here on the masterful art of persuasion, recommends a different approach:
'Know thyself', I think someone once said. There might be a generalisation for many selves.
Just putting this here again, in case you are coming to this for the first time.
Read 4 tweets
6 Apr
If you are a monetary economist encountering stories about Mitch McConnell it can be confusing as in certain poses he looks very like Mervyn King, ex BoE Governor, and half of your brain is thinking 'what the hell is he doing talking about race in the US?'
See what I mean?
I mean - have you ever seen them in the same room together, eh??
Read 5 tweets
6 Apr
When you have proposed a particular hammer, obviously all problems look like a nail, but with that aside I think a proper integrated epidemiological-econ modelling body, independent of govt, could really be adding to the debate over lockdown exit and vaccine passports.
Although big picture there is not a trade-off between £ and health, there is once you get to the fine details, eg the exact timing of lockdown release, what to release for whom. And an attempt could be made to quantify the costs and benefits.
Similarly vaccine passports, which are partly about the strategy for the transition from here until max vaccine take-up [and also partly about dealing with nonvaccinated in the longer term], can be modelled so we know what the 'discrimination' is buying and who benefits.
Read 4 tweets
6 Apr
If you are a centrist, empiricist Dad, the handwringing is that the media [tv + radio+newspapers] already seems overwhelmingly right wing and anti-empiricist/anti-evidence.
Dilemma: free media is part of a free society. Yet polarised and fragmented free for all media means that some people will never find out what is actually going on and make informed decisions.
Obvs given that @Dannythefink has diagnosed me as someone who is not even honest to themselves about their own honesty, and is secretly an anarchist, the centrist Dad comment should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Read 6 tweets
21 Mar
BBC don't have to get this wrong and help the government out. There are lots of people on here who can help them understand why this was a false choice, and why the govt retrospectively want to maintain that it was a real one.
Fair enough to say 'the govt will try to paint this as the choice they had to make, that it was an agonizing one, but in fact most experts see this as a false choice, because locking down earlier would have saved lives and £...'
and to follow up with 'and they would argue that the govt is trying to cover up for a failure to see this by continuing to stress a trade-off that wasn't there'
Read 14 tweets

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