Explainer | Why are UK and EU still fighting over Brexit after all this time?

More than five years have passed since the referendum vote of 2016, yet arguments show no sign of ending

Latest conflict focuses on Northern Ireland, only part of UK to share a land border with an EU member – Ireland

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Dogs stand on a wall overlooking Northern Ireland on the left and the Republic of Ireland on the right. Photo: Reuters

Published: 9:11pm, 14 Oct 2021Updated: 10:09pm, 14 Oct 2021

“Get Brexit done” was British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s slogan when he ran for election two years ago.

Since then, the United Kingdom has pulled out of the European Union after more than four decades of membership and several years of wrangling over divorce terms.

And yet the quarrels go on. The UK and the EU of now 27 nations are once again trading accusations and insults as they try to resolve rough spots in their relationship.

What’s the problem?

The current conflict centres on Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK that shares a land border with an EU member – Ireland.

While Britain was part of the EU’s vast free trade single market, there were no barriers to people and goods crossing that border.

The open frontier helped underpin the peace process that ended decades of Catholic-Protestant violence in Northern Ireland because it allowed the people there, whatever their identity, to feel at home in both Ireland and Britain.

By taking the UK out of the EU’s economic order, Brexit is creating new barriers and checks on trade. Both Britain and the EU agreed such checks could not take place on the Ireland-Northern Ireland border because of the risk to the peace process.