We can now see just how troubling, and dangerous, the Northern Ireland Protocol is. This protocol unquestionably compromises British sovereignty. Take the sausages controversy – or the chilled-meats controversy, to give it its proper name. It might seem mad and frivolous. Tabloid headline-writers are certainly having a field day with it. But it is incredibly serious. A nation that cannot freely send an unfrozen sausage from one part of its territory to another is not a free nation. It does not exercise full sovereign control over its internal economic and transportation affairs. The protocol compromises British sovereignty in two chilling ways. First, it partially annexes a part of the United Kingdom, insisting that this territory should remain subject to the demands and regulations of a foreign power. This weakens Britain’s capacity for sovereign decision-making. And secondly, the protocol acts as an open invitation to EU oligarchs, and their ally in the White House, to reprimand Brexit Britain, to chastise it for ‘breaking EU rules’, to insist that it adhere to the political preferences of Brussels and Washington – or else. Or else there will be consequences.