I do love your posts NJ.
Beautifully and eloquently argued, but not in the real world :-)
There is no idea way of sorting this issue. The NI protocol is indeed unsatisfactory, maybe the worst possible solution in fact, apart from all the others, as someone such as Churchill once said about democracy...
I call the split artificial because the EU have insisted that we have a trading border within our own country of GB&NI. I'm asking why the trading border can't be between the EU and Eire. I know they are one trading area but so was the whole of UN&NI before brexit. Using your fence analogy, it's like us having a fence between our dining room and living room.
The Government have signed this protocol agreeing to article 16. The UK Government was very upset that the EU briefly triggered article 16. But you have signed a petition asking for it to be triggered. You make no sense.
" it's like us having a fence between our dining room and living room. "
Well, it isn't really like that.
It's more like two houses, separated by a moat (a notorious assiciation) but one of which is lived in by two families.
The border across the moat (despite what New Judge says) is easier to manage than trying to divide the house - your analogy is closer to the situation on the island of Ireland - that is what the protocol avoids, but it also avoids a lot of the grief of the other one two.
It is a compromise to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
The alternative is a hard border or the rest of the UK joining the single market and trade area.
Eire is the innocent party here. A border between Eire an EU member state and the rest of the EU is an on starter. Why should they be punished because the UK has left the EU?
The "big stick" that is Article 16 allows either side to introduce "safeguarding measures" if the Protocol would lead to "...serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade..."
It doesn't specify what these measures should be (though it does specify a procedure which should be followed to implement A16 which most certainly was not followed by the EU when it implemented it - albeit briefly - a couple of weeks ago.
The safeguarding measures the UK needs to implement - if the Protocol is not to be ditched in its entirety - is to simply say that there will be no customs formalities enacted for goods entering NI from GB and that no foreign officials will be allowed to interfere in the internal movement of goods within the UK. This situation will be maintained until more sensible procedures (which are described in the Protocol) are adhered to.
Danny Can you not grasp the fact that you can't have "free trade" with GB and also the ROI if you are NI?
"Free trade with NI" might be what signees think they are signing up to, but it in fact is no such thing. It's a means to get round a particular issue (the vaccine export issue on the case of the EU).
There is no "issue" here: it's just "lift the ruddy great stick because someone else did :-)
"Eire wants a free border with NI just as much as NI do."
Eire also wants a frictionless trade border with the EU As Sunk points out, why would they damage that because of Brext which most people in NI didn't even want anyway?
ROI is part of the Customs Union with 27 other EU countries. Why on earth would they want to give that up just to have an open border with NI? They want both, not one or the other. But if it came to it, the choice would be a very easy one for ROI.