Irish backstop
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The Irish backstop (formally called the "Northern Ireland Protocol") was a proposed protocol to a draft Brexit withdrawal agreement that never came into force. It was developed by the May government and the European Commission in December 2017 and finalised in November 2018, and aimed to prevent an evident border (one with customs controls) between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit.
The backstop would have required keeping Northern Ireland in some aspects of the Single Market until an alternative arrangement was agreed between the EU and the UK. The proposal also provided for the UK as a whole to have a common customs territory with the EU, until a solution was delivered to avoid the need for customs controls within the UK (between Northern Ireland and Great Britain). The 'backstop' element was that the arrangement would have continued to apply potentially indefinitely unless the UK and the EU were both to agree on a different arrangement, for example on a trade agreement between UK and EU at the end of the transition period.
The Irish government and Northern Irish nationalists supported the protocol, whereas Unionists (who reject any difference in treatment as between Northern Ireland and Great Britain) opposed it. By early 2019, the Westminster Parliament had voted three times against ratifying the Withdrawal Agreement and thus also rejected the backstop. The decision of the Democratic Unionist Party (which had a confidence and supply arrangement to support May's minority government) to vote against the proposal was decisive in its defeat.
In October 2019, the new Johnson government renegotiated the draft, replacing the backstop. In the new protocol, the whole of the UK was to come out of the EU Customs Union as a single customs territory. Northern Ireland was to be included in any future UK trade deals, but have no tariffs or restrictions on goods crossing the border in Ireland in either direction. This in effect created a de facto customs border with Great Britain – the "Irish Sea border". There is also a unilateral exit mechanism by which the Northern Ireland Assembly can choose to leave the protocol via a simple majority vote. This new protocol has been dubbed by some as "Chequers for Northern Ireland", due to its similarity with the UK-wide Chequers future relationship plan proposed by Theresa May, which had previously been rejected by the EU and criticised by Johnson.