The reason the Good Friday Agreement works is because it uses the umbrella of the EU to acknowledge all of Ireland as one country for the practical purposes of everyday life and business. One economy, freedom of movement, domicile, goods, services, capital and labour. No borders. Two systems of government. One a fully functioning independent Republic, the other a peculiar power sharing system which spends a good deal of time not working. But this malfunction hardly matters because the combination of the UK to which Ulster is attached, Ireland of which it is a part, and the EU of which it is a member, makes its own system all but redundant.
Ulster voted to remain in the EU and the majority support Theresa May’s backstop. The DUP, the Tory Party’s ally, represents only the fundamentalist and extreme interpretation of protestantism and demands as its price not only a social order of societies and marches which would be banned on the mainland UK, but also that their country should be dragged out of the EU against its democratic will.
Boris now proposes customs checks and a mixed trading relationship which plainly will not satisfy either the majority in both parts of Ireland nor the rest of the EU. On top of this the whole thing is to be subject to approval or veto by the Norther Ireland Executive and Assembly, both of which are shut down and unlikely to reopen.
I struggle to see how on earth the EU can agree to such stuff or how on earth it will ever get through the Commons. But if you think it all good and go, so be it. You clearly know something I don’t.