How Boris Johnson – and Brexit – almost unraveled the Good Friday deal

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Interesting fact as we approach the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement: there is no actual reference to a "hard border" or "soft border », or something like that, for is in the famous text.

It is certainly a matter of hard political reality, however, that the GFA is based on the absence of a hard land border between Ireland (i.e. the EU) and the Northern Ireland (i.e. the United Kingdom). That's why we have a partial trade border instead along the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The border had to go somewhere. If it were to be on the island of Ireland, it would be unacceptable to Nationalists and Republicans, and most Unionists.

But if it was dumped in the Irish Sea, then, as we see now, trade unionists will find it boring, alienating and equally unacceptable. The origin of the current Troubles, and the (fortunately still low) risk of a return to The Troubles, lies in Brexit and its impact.

Reconciling Brexit with the Irish peace process is a problem frankly insoluble, like a Rubik's Cube that someone has secretly sabotaged. The best you can do is get it right, which is where Rishi Sunak's Windsor setting is superior to Boris Johnson's original Northern Ireland protocol.

But the protocol, with all its flaws, was what Johnson signed without understanding it, according to legend. Hence his guilt. Sunak's frame is flawed, but he went much further than Johnson ever did. That's because he was bothered by Northern Ireland in a way that Johnson never seemed to be.

So if you want to trust the GFA as some sort of latter-day scripture to support an argument or whatever, then you won't find it in the original document. What you have instead is the emphatic and (most importantly) sincere commitment from virtually everyone involved that a hard border is simply unacceptable.

It is, through constant repetition by successive Taoiseachs, British Prime Ministers, leaders of all major parties in Northern Ireland and even Eurosceptics, a political imperative, an obligation.

An anti-Brexit billboard seen from Dublin Road in Newry, Northern Ireland