Britain and the EU head towards a showdown over the Northern Ireland protocol

This week’s announcement by Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, of a proposed bill that would give the government powers to override the Northern Ireland protocol was not a surprise. In order to keep the province in the eu’s single market, the protocol imposes customs checks on goods moving across the Irish Sea. Threats to change it unilaterally, if negotiations with the bloc do not yield compromise, were heavily trailed. But it is still shocking that any British government is ready to renege on an international treaty. The claim by Ms Truss that the bill will be legal under international law is unconvincing even to many Tory mps.

The gambit also looks unlikely to achieve the two goals that she set out for it. The first is to persuade the Democratic Unionist Party (dup) to return to Northern Ireland’s power-sharing executive, which is in limbo until it does. But the dup, which says it will return only if the protocol is scrapped or fundamentally changed, is unlikely to move quickly; it distrusts the British government and it knows the bill would struggle to get through Parliament.