Since 2016, there’s been an understandable focus on the Irish land border—though largely based on an ahistoric reading of the Good Friday Agreement—but far less concern about the sea border. Yet, the warning signs of unionist unrest were always there1/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/12/northern-ireland-offers-warning-few-are-hearing/603196/

In 2019 I wrote about the dangerous logic taking hold among unionists: “Republican warnings that any new land-border checks would be targeted were held up as reasons to avoid such infrastructure... What lessons should loyalists take from this?.. [one loyalist] asked.” 2/

The threat has been clear since 2019 too: “There is already talk.. of blockading the ports into Northern Ireland to make the new economic border checks unworkable. Other scenarios set out included disrupting trade with the Republic of Ireland.” 3/

The threats were never as hollow as they might’ve seemed—because of the now famous article 16:

“If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties… the UK may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures.” 4/

It’s hard to judge the threat to the Irish protocol posed by unionist fury, but it’s not nothing. N Ireland’s history shows it only functions if there’s cross community consent: majoritarianism doesn’t cut it. Brexit has made such a compromise very hard. That’s the reality /ends/