Resolving the Northern Ireland protocol will not ‘get Brexit done’

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

The protocol is one of many areas of continuing friction, albeit an important one (PA)

The Independent’s editorial on Rishi Sunak’s approach to Brexit perhaps overstates the impact of a welcome achievement – should it ever materialise. Resolution of the Northern Ireland protocol would settle one important Brexit issue among many, but it will not "get Brexit done".

Signing up for Boris Johnson’s slogan is, by association, signing up for Johnson’s Brexit proposition – the oven-ready deal. We have already completed those negotiations and signed a legally binding treaty. That seemed conclusive did it not? The protocol is one of many areas of continuing friction – albeit an important one – and the reconsideration of others is likely to continue well into the future.

Brexit was badly motivated by opportunism and a David Cameron-sponsored folly that should not have happened. It has become a widely recognised act of self-harm founded on a referendum discredited by lies. It has diminished us and continues to do so. Opinion polls suggest that the public has seen enough and wants back in the EU. That would resolve the matter of the protocol at a stroke, as well as many other things as well.