Boris Johnson's Brexit has always been a swindle. Now Ireland will pay the price | Rafael Behr

Reneging on an international treaty shows the prime minister cares more about a Eurosceptic fantasy than the Good Friday agreement

There are cases in history of national leaders being coerced into treaties. Yet only Boris Johnson claims to have signed an international agreement by mistake. In the prime minister's telling, the UK was bamboozled into a substandard Brexit deal last year. Events were moving at pace"; the politics were challenging"; European rules were smuggled into the small print. So parliament must pass a law disagreeing with the agreement. To fix the deal, the deal must be broken.

Related: Boris Johnson's push for no deal will harm the country and his party | Polly Toynbee