Northern Ireland and Brexit

It's been a while. There has been other news of course,and I have been devoting Brexit time to reading R Tombs's excellent book This Sovereign Isle. There has also been a bit of a hesitation in forming up a suitable narrative to account for the upsurge of violent protest in NI. It is obviously the result of Brexit related matters such as the absurd obstructions developed by the EC to disrupt trade between NI and the mainland, even for goods which remain in NI, but there are additional factors such as perceived bias in policing the Sinn Fein funeral which obviously broke Covid regulations. Newsnight has tried to pin it all on Boris and his Brexit deal, of course, introducing that as an obvious background 'fact' and inviting people to comment on it (although T Villiers managed to get in the obvious counter about the EC weaponising the border  before being cut off).

The Graun today has the ever-reliable J Freedland

The consequences of Boris Johnson’s careless Brexit are playing out in Belfast

the true, founding purpose of the European Union: to ensure that a continent mired in blood for centuries would not descend into conflict again...shared membership of the EU had proved to be the key that unlocked peace in Northern Ireland after three decades of murderous pain...these were the life-and-death arguments for continued UK membership of the EU,

Nothing to do with building a cartel or imposing a European model of government then? Nothing to do with shared culture or migrating birds now either?

Of course, violence has many fathers....[but]...The incendiary difference this time is Brexit. From January, British goods arriving into Northern Ireland became subject to EU customs checks for the first time....This is the ineluctable logic of Brexit. 

And there are the personal inadequacies of Johnson:

“there were moments when PM had to rip up grid, cancel break, let people down, stay up late, hit phones, spend, flatter, arm twist and do nothing else for week”. This, wrote Fletcher, was just such a moment. Yet Johnson is doing none of those things. What’s worse, if he did decide to get a grip, who among us thinks he would be capable of it? ...

Of course, as Freedland admits, common membership of the EU actually did not remove the border between Ni and the Republic. The two remained separated by all sorts of things,including currency, laws and history (including murderous pain) and, to some extent, language. But:

So long as both the UK and Ireland were in the same EU club, the border between them could be blurred, allowing people in the north to identify as British or Irish or both without too much friction.

What prevents that today? Ludicrous trade regulations and spiteful bureaucratic delays imposed uniquely on this trade, designed to punish the UK, weaponising the border, as the EC promised to do from years back. Johnson might be inadequate in not recognising that the EC would continue to do this. He now surely has a strong case for suspending the protocol to preserve the peace?