The Irish protocol.

I don't believe the idea of checks (either in the Irish Sea or the Irish border) are within the scope of the GFA; the concept of Brexit wasn't considered at the time. My comment on preventing checks on the island of Ireland was in reference to the explicit commitment of both the British government and the EU to avoiding this at the outset.

Did the EU sign up to an agreement that prioritised N/S over E/W? I don't think they did, I think they treaded a very fine line between both and found a reasonable middle ground that respected the British red lines without giving so much of a free pass that they undermined the very concept of the EU.

Did the EU sign up to an agreement that contradicted the Act of Union? Well firstly, the Act of Union is internal UK legislation, and the EU aren't party to it.

Even putting the obvious nonsense of holding the EU responsible for your domestic legislation, according to your courts, no.....they signed up to an agreement that replaced parts of that Act in legal standing for Britain.

Without the consent of the people of NI? As you were at pains to tell us previously, Brexit was a vote by the entirety of the UK, not the individual constituent parts. The massive mandate that the Tory Party received in the most recent election would suggest that UK wide support was there for it. If this isn't a sufficient mandate in the case of the precise nature of Brexit, then surely one must follow the logic back and apply the criticism in the correct place; Brexit itself which didn't have the consent of the people of NI.

Even then, putting that aside, the Protocol does explicitly contain a consent mechanism for NI to decide whether to continue being subject to the Protocol, so swing and a miss again, you're 0/2 there.

Worse than that; Downcow only a few short posts ago was telling us about their growing confidence that the NI Protocol is actually a massive win for Unionism and has put paid to any chance of Unification for a lifetime.....but a contrarian nature and a tendency to rail against anything with any sort of Irish connection means even if they fully believe it kills any chance of Unification, they still have to complain about it.

The fable of the scorpion and the frog comes to mind.

You were spouting nonsense about a weekly protest in Dublin a couple of pages ago. What an utter fraud you are.

Republicans signed the deal (Your heroes didn't) and worked it. There is a lesson there if you care to climb down off the horse

So: hundreds of Protestants tortured to death by the IRA, thousands of medicines not available due to the Protocol. No proof of course.

Anything else I've forgotten?

You’re not really contradicting what Francie says, though, are you?

Francie’s point is about how Northern Ireland is perceived in Great Britain. To reply with an article asserting that Northern Ireland unionists can be justifiably confident in their own identity is to miss the point. They can be confident as they like but, such is the disparity of wealth, power and influence, the health of the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland depends much more on how Great Britain feels about Northern Ireland than it does on how NI unionists feel about themselves.

What current events show is that the Westminster establishment, pretty much on all sides, assigns at best a secondary value to the union with NI (and, for most of them, much less than that).  Copuled with the fact that, within NI, a large minority of the population assigns zero value to the union or indeed actively opposes it, this presents a challenge to NI unionists to which I think they can respond to in one of three ways:

1. They can try to change attitudes in GB.

2. They can accept that attitudes in GB are as they are, and work out what is the best course for NI and, in particular, for NI unionists, in light of that reality. (Which doesn’t rule out an attempt to change attitudes in GB, of course - indeed, it might point to that.)

3. They can remain in denial.

I have to say that, (a) responding to the challenge by trying to switch the conversation to one about NI unionism's self-regard, and (b) doing that by the frankly ludicrous tactic of presenting NI as a bastion of cosmopolitan liberal values, does look a lot like option 3 to me. And that’s very much of a piece with your previous tactic of championing demonstrations in Dublin as a tactic for trying to ameliorate the problems inflicted on NI by Westminster's choices. 

You can do better, I’m sure. And, if you can’t, NI had better hope there are other unionists who can.  

It’s absurd to suggest that the UK has no influence when the NI Protocol exists in its present form because, and only because, the UK demanded it, and refused to ratify the WA without it. It’s absurd and dishonest to suggest that Ireland “talked up potential violence if there were any further checks on the island”; you should rather suggest - as we knew all along, and as Dominic Cummings has recently publicly confirmed - that Tory Brexiters deliberately ignored the obvious risks because they decided peace in Northern Ireland was unimportant, compared to the Holy Grail of Hard Brexit. Again, your inability to engage with this attitude and with its implications for the health of the union points to a deeply-entrenched avoidance tactic. it will not serve you well; denial of unpleasant realities never does.

I find a shred of hope, though, in your admission that protests in Dublin are a response to the situation you find yourself in of being unable to influence “the bad bits of the protocol” through domestic UK politics. Follow that thought. Why is it, do you think, that NI unionists were unable to influence the protocol through domestic UK politics? What could they do to change that state of affairs, rather than having to put up with the humiliation of seeking to influence a foreign government to protect their interests because the UK government clearly won’t?

The silliness of all this is that Ireland would love if there were fewer or no restrictions on goods crossing the Irish Sea from Great Britain. For the reasons I have pointed out to you before, this would be massively, massively in Ireland’s interest. It’s pathetic that you have such a distorted view of reality that you think Ireland would have to be pressurised into supporting this, and frankly disgraceful to you that you hint that some think there is a need for violence to bring this about. Of all the parties in this relationship, the one that NI Unionists least need to press to favour fewer Irish Sea restrictions is the Irish government. 

For restrictions on the Irish Sea trade to be eased, two things have to happen. First, the UK has to be willing to make the decisions that would make this possible. Secondly, the EU has to be persuaded that doing this would not threated the integrity of the Single Market. Protests (or worse) in Dublin will achieve neither of those things. Now go and take your grubby hints of violence and direct them at the UK Government and at the EU-27.