Partygate is once again gripping Westminster, just two weeks ahead of local elections. But there’s at least one part of the UK where voters have other priorities. Recent politics in Northern Ireland have involved a bomb threat, riots, a brick thrown at a constituency window and a rally where loyalist protesters put a noose around a picture of a moderate Unionist politician. The elections there look likely to be the moment when Sinn Fein, the hard-line Irish nationalist party, wins the province’s premiership for the first time, with unknown results. All is not well.

Against this backdrop, and with negotiations over the Northern Irish Protocol stalled, the UK Government has come up with a new sabre to rattle at the EU. This time, it’s not Article 16, but a new law the Government is threatening – via the newspapers – which could override the protocol entirely. The law would doubtless be challenged by the EU and in our courts, but Boris Johnson and Liz Truss appear to think that a new legal dynamic might break the deadlock.

Alas, they are wrong. Instead, the good ship Northern Ireland will drift on until it hits a much bigger crisis. There is no quick fix for this unfinished Brexit business.

This is not what ministers want to hear. Like most of us, they want this issue off the agenda. When Ms Truss arrived at the Foreign Office last September, she gave her officials until March this year to strike a new deal for Northern Ireland. The deadline came and went.

The problem is that whatever Westminster does, it can’t fix the underlying issue, which is the state of play among Northern Irish Unionists. Unhappy as they are about the protocol, the Unionists are badly split between hard-liners and moderates. The May elections are likely to make this even clearer. And if the Unionists cannot speak with one voice and force the EU to take them seriously, there can be no resolution.

In theory, Unionist hard-liners should be in the ascendant. The protocol imposes a border down the Irish Sea that manifestly changes constitutional arrangements in Northern Ireland without Unionist consent. The EU won’t renegotiate. And the protocol requires Northern Ireland’s assembly to hold a highly provocative vote on its terms every four years (the first in December 2024), which also doesn’t require cross-community consent.

Unfortunately, after its disastrous spell in government with Theresa May, the DUP’s credibility in Brussels is shot. No amount of blood-curdling rhetoric can disguise the fact that the party squandered its one chance at real power in 2017. Handed this exceptional opportunity to influence events, the DUP instead made a series of appalling miscalculations which wound up getting Northern Ireland effectively ejected from the UK single market – surely a contender for the biggest political own-goal ever. Some in the party now appear to see the spectre of insurrection as the only card it has left and they may be right. But no one else wants to go down that road.

This leaves the moderates, represented by the UUP. A year ago, the party seemed to be on the road back to power. It, too, rejects most elements of the protocol, but it has signalled a willingness to compromise and suggested measures to help build up trust with the EU. Whether this would work is an open question, but it’s surely worth trying after the DUP’s failure. Still, UUP support has topped out at less than 15 per cent in the polls. It isn’t enough.

One reason for that may be that the protocol is not actually top of the agenda in Northern Ireland. An Irish News poll found that the Irish Sea border was only the top issue for 11.7 per cent of Unionist voters. Worries about healthcare and the economy loom larger – and the UUP has the misfortune to have been in charge of health during Covid. The province’s economy, meanwhile, is recovering, but it’s hard to see how businesses can invest until they know what long-term legal and economic regime they will be operating under.

The EU is fond of claiming that the lack of interest in the protocol shows there’s no problem. But Brussels has mistaken the lack of a current crisis for a state of stability. In fact, the situation is more akin to a top-heavy galleon whose cannons happen to be sliding around the deck in temporary balance. For one thing, the protocol still hasn’t even been fully implemented, thanks to an endless grace period on goods checks extended by the UK. The EU has threatened to sue, but hasn’t done it yet. These fudges might make the galleon look all right, but it isn’t. The truth is that Unionists will never accept the protocol.

Unfortunately, it looks like the situation will potter along until some kind of crisis precipitates a change. Our Government may be hoping to trigger one with the EU by passing provocative laws. But the threat rings hollow. The May 5 election results are likely to weaken the UK’s bargaining position rather than strengthen it, due to Unionist divisions, and now is clearly not the best time for a trade war with Europe, given growing inflation and the war in Ukraine. The UK cannot manufacture negotiating strength by passing laws or triggering articles, but will have to wait for the truth of its position to be revealed by events. Ideally, those events would involve the Unionists getting their act together and becoming a credible party to the talks.

Instead, the worry is that it will take a dire event to break the deadlock. At worst, this could mean an upsurge in Unionist protests and violence. It could stem from nationalist over-confidence if a victory in May sets off a brazen move towards uniting Ireland, or from EU arrogance, like its temporary triggering of Article 16 over vaccines in January last year. Or it may be that the collapse of power-sharing after the election cripples Northern Ireland in the face of growing economic crises across the world. Or a confrontation could arise from the UK finally taking advantage of its post-Brexit freedoms to diverge from the EU, triggering a demand from Brussels for more checks on the Irish Sea. None of these are particularly happy prospects for Northern Ireland.

Alternatively, the EU could start to act like the great strategic entity it fancies itself to be and realise that in a world increasingly menaced by aggressive dictatorships, the democratic world cannot afford to be distracted and divided by a niggling dispute over border checks on a tiny volume of trade.

It could, for once, head off a crisis instead of waiting for one. And pigs might fly – but only if they’re subject to sanitary and phytosanitary checks on the border.