On Monday afternoon, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a "new chapter” in U.K.-European Union relations.
It’s easy to be skeptical at such announcements. Before the champagne corks could pop, members of Sunak’s own Conservative party and the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland attacked previous deals with the gusto of kids set loose on a birthday pinata, spilling its guts all over the floor of parliament. Boris Johnson’s deals were like a sugar rush that left Britain feeling flat and regretful.
This one will have to survive scrutiny of the text and no doubt some noisy objections. But there is every reason to expect it will: It removes a range of frictions and red tape that were regular complaints of the Northern Ireland Protocol Johnson negotiated and then sought to override. What has changed since 2018 or 2019 isn’t so much the specific solutions, but the world in which the two sides debate the details of customs bar codes and frozen sausage imports.