Remember Brexit? Yes, that one. Readers outside the U.K.—including in Europe—might be surprised to discover it’s still an issue. Britons voted to leave the European Union in 2016. Two general elections and two prime ministers later, the departure formally occurred in early 2021. So why on earth has the issue exploded, again, this week?
The latest controversy concerns Northern Ireland, whose border with the Republic of Ireland constitutes the only land crossing between the European Union and the newly independent U.K. Prime Minister
is threatening to tear up the part of Britain’s divorce settlement with the EU that governs trade between the British mainland and Northern Ireland, and between Northern Ireland and the rest of the EU—a move that would undermine the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of sectarian violence.
That’s the panoramic view of the controversy. The technical details would bore you to tears. Suffice it to say that, as with most things Brexit, the real problem is that this dispute exposes identity crises on both sides.
On London’s side, Northern Ireland has been a constant source of Brexit friction because it is neither fully part of the U.K. or fully independent of it. The 1998 agreement was a fudge. The deal cemented British “sovereignty” over Northern Ireland, but also inserted those scare quotes as the U.K. relinquished two of the defining characteristics of modern sovereignty: control of the border and control of citizenship.
London, Dublin and the parties to the Northern Ireland conflict agreed to maintain a…