The US president should tell the British prime minister to honour the protocol or take the whole UK into the EU’s trading standards regime
This week’s planned G7 chat on Northern Ireland between the US president, Joe Biden, and British prime minister, Boris Johnson, can be brief. Biden should tell Johnson to stop being an idiot and honour the protocol.
Everyone knows there can be no erecting of a border across the fields of Ireland. Johnson knew that when he campaigned for Brexit. He knew it when he decided to leave the single market. If he promised Northern Ireland’s unionists something else, he was lying. He should get busy preparing EU-compatible customs barriers in Belfast, as required by the protocol. Biden might add that Johnson can forget any US/UK trade deal if he refuses, not that any deal agreed by Congress is ever likely to be in Britain’s interest.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist