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And my take on the view in Dublin https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/unionism-is-in-turmoil-worry-in-dublin-as-north-threatens-to-regress-1.4532480
Dublin understands that the roots of this week’s violence go deep. “Those 13-year-olds aren’t angry about customs forms,” says one person in Dublin well-briefed on the Government’s thinking. “Unionism is in turmoil.”
Dublin also understands that it can’t do anything about Bobby Storey’s Covid rule-breaking funeral, or unionism’s ancestral unease as it contemplates Scottish independence or the psychological scars of yet another betrayal from a UK government.
But it can and does have a voice on the application of the protocol, and it does have an interest in making it as acceptable to unionist sensitivities as possible.
Sources in Dublin are hyper-sensitive on the point, as it forces them to straddle the precarious line between Dublin’s interests in the North and its responsibilities to the EU.
But the brutal truth is that, while there may be scope to manage its application, there will be no renegotiation of the protocol as unionists demand. Neither the EU nor London is interested in a renegotiation, and Dublin certainly isn’t going to push for one.
Further contacts between the two governments are likely, with a visit by Simon Coveney to London next week for talks with the UK government understood to be on the cards.
Optimism that politicians in either government can defuse the tensions is not high, however; that is a task that only really be achieved on the ground. There is little sign of it.
