BrexitandNorthernIreland
No surrender
A
t least the mood music has im
proved.ThemeetingonJanuary24th
inBrusselsbetweenLizTruss,theforeign
secretary,andMarosSefcovic,theEuro
pean Commission’s vicepresident, was
describedas“constructive”,nota wordof
tenheardbefore Ms Trusstook overas
BrexitnegotiatorfromLordFrostinDe
cember. The two sides have said they
wouldliketosettlethelongdisputeover
theNorthernIrelandprotocolbytheendof
February,well aheadofelectionsto the
province’sassemblyinMay.Yetthistime
tablelooksincreasinglyimplausible.
Theprotocol,partoftheBrexitwith
drawaltreaty,wasdesignedtoavoida hard
northsouth border with Ireland that
might upset Northern Ireland’s fragile
peace.ItkepttheprovinceintheEuropean
Union’ssinglemarketforgoods.Butthis
necessitateseastwestcustomsandborder
checksbetweenit andGreatBritain,which
isoutsideboththesinglemarketandthe
customsunion.Thegovernmentwantsto
scrapmostsuchcontrolsandremoveany
rolefortheEuropeanCourtofJustice(ecj)
asarbiterofdisputes.Theeuisreadyto
simplifymanychecks,butnottorenegoti
atetheentireprotocol.Hencetheimpasse.
MsTrussisseeninBrusselsasa poten
tialdealmaker,nota Brexitideologue.In
volvingtheForeignOfficeinthenegotia
tionisalsodeemedhelpful.UnlikeLord
Frost,itfavoursa betterrelationshipwith
theeu;anditisacutelyconsciousthatthe
Americans, as key outside sponsors of
peace in Northern Ireland, would be furi
ous were the delicate balance of the proto
col upset. Yet although Ms Truss talks
much less than Lord Frost did about invok
ing the protocol’s Article 16 to allow unilat
eral suspension of its trade provisions, she
is not offering many other hints at com
promise. Boris Johnson this week termed
the implementation of the protocol “in
sane and pettifogging”. Mij Rahman of the
Eurasia group consultancy says the gap be
tween the two sides remains wide.
Political turmoil in Westminster is also
not conducive to early agreement. Mr
Johnson’s troubles at home are being
watched carefully in Brussels, where dip
lomats wonder if it is worth even consider
ing further concessions when they may
face a new prime minister in the near fu
ture. As a leading contender for the succes
sion, Ms Truss is also constrained. An erst
while Remainer, she knows she would
have her work cut out to win support from
hardline proBrexit Tory mps. Although
they voted for the protocol in 2020, many
now regard it as the result of feeble negoti
ating by Mr Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa
May, and would prefer to see it torn up than
endorsed in some mushy compromise.
Raoul Ruparel of Deloitte, who was an
adviser on the eu to Mrs May, notes that,
even if a deal now seems more possible,
politics in Northern Ireland will make its
implementation very hard. The leader of
the Democratic Unionist Party (dup), Sir
Jeffrey Donaldson, continues to reject the
protocol completely and to demand the in
vocation of Article 16. He can hardly back
down before elections to the assembly in
May. Katy Hayward of Queen’s University
Belfast suggests that he wants to turn those
elections into a referendum on the proto
col. Yet polls suggest voters want it re
tained if it can be smoothed.
Northern Ireland’s economy has re
cently done better than the rest of the Unit
ed Kingdom, perhaps reflecting the benefit
of the single market. And the biggest party
after the elections is expected no longer to
be the dup but the prorepublican Sinn
Fein. Many analysts believe that the dup
would rather engineer the collapse of the
powersharing executive than accept the
appointment of a Sinn Fein first minister.
In truth, time has probably run out for
an early deal over the protocol. A more flex
ible British team might have presented the
pragmatic concessions offered by Mr Sef
covic last October to eliminate half of all
customs checks as a negotiating triumph.
But a combination of Mr Johnson’s obsti
nate refusal to concede that his Brexit deal
inevitably meant a border in the Irish Sea,
and a theological insistence on rewriting
the protocol to get rid of the ecj, gotinthe
way. The consequence is to prolonguncer
tainty over Northern Ireland’s future.nHopes of an early deal on the protocol
are likely to be dashed
So close, yet so far
The Economist January 29th 2022 Britain 21Decodinglife’sblueprintSilver linings
playbook
I
n a vialof liquid the size of a fingernail
sit 384 genomes. A few days ago, each
was inside the membrane of a coronavirus,
somewhere in a nasal passage in England.
The vial’s contents are placed in a printer
sized box packed with lasers and micro
scopic glass tubes. In the next 24 hours it
will tear them into their component mole
cules, then reassemble them in such a way
as to record their original order. That order
is the blueprint that determines the virus’s
structure—and whether it will coexist
peacefully with humanity, or cause havoc.
In response to the pandemic, Britain in
creased viral sequencing faster than any
where else. Since May 2020 it has handled
more than a quarter of all sarscov2 ge
nomes sequenced worldwide, despite re
cording just 4% of positive results. The
Sanger Centre on the outskirts of Cam
bridge sequences 64,000 covid genomes a
week. Data from its machines are crunched
at the nearby European Bioinformatics In
stitute (ebi), and used by the uk Health Se
curity Agency, a publichealth body, to
track the evolution of the virus, decipher
the meaning of changing case numbers
and adjust predictions. Now the govern
ment wants to use the expertise honed by
the pandemic to improve the diagnosis
and treatment of diseases of every kind.
Britain’s headstart in sequencing the
covid genome owed much to three scien
tists, Professors Watson, Crick and Sanger,
who won Nobel prizes last century for geH INXTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE
How the pandemic has boosted
Britain’s genomesequencing effortsElementary, dear Watson and Crick