The ramifications of this clumsy blunder rumble on at two levels. One is the difficulty associated with trade between NI and the rest of the UK which is far worse than promised. The other is the reputational damage to the EU itself, as a measured international player and one on whom, in spite of having left it, the UK can rely.
The consequences are hard Brexiteers on steroids and a reinvigorated Democratic Unionist party in NI raging about the EU, complicated by the fact that this hard Brexit party leads the government in a Province which voted to Remain.
Blame flies through the air in all directions but in the end the root cause is not the Protocol, or the EU blunder, or cross trade bureaucracy, but Brexit itself. A problem entirely of the UK’s making. An historic crime against enlightenment and unity at the scene of which the fingerprints of the Tory Party are everywhere to be found.