EU vaccine row 'political penalty kick for unionists'

Break glass in case of emergency and push the red button - or maybe not.

The EU hovered a finger over that button and pulled back at the last minute.

Article 16 wasn't triggered, but the casing protecting it was shattered and won't be easily repaired.

The emergency button - like the EU - is now sitting exposed after it "cocked up big time" to quote former Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith.

In its high-stakes battle with AstraZeneca over vaccine supplies, the EU reached in the wrong direction, got burned and quickly changed course.

But perhaps more telling, in the scramble it failed to consult with the Northern Ireland Protocol's custodians in Dublin, London or Brussels.

Even the Joint Committee, set up to oversee its operation, appears to have been blindsided.

Article 16 rules do allow for swift intervention without wider consultation in "exceptional circumstances requiring immediate action" without "prior examination".

It states that the EU or the UK "may apply forthwith the protective measures strictly necessary to remedy the situation."

But the rules also make clear that the Joint Committee must be notified about the measures taken "without delay".

Whatever the sequencing and the hard conversation between Dublin and Brussels, political parties in Northern Ireland are already picking through the wreckage to salvage what they can.

For Sinn Féin, the SDLP and Alliance, it is all about damage limitation and ensuring Brussels has learned lessons from its costly political blunder.

But for the DUP and Ulster Unionists, it has supercharged their onslaught on the Northern Ireland protocol.

They can say that, at the first sign of trouble, Brussels effectively advocated for the same hard land border it had fought years to prevent.

It was a political penalty kick for unionists into an open goal.

Now the glass is broken they want London to push the same emergency Article 16 button.

DUP leader Arlene Foster raised the stakes even higher when suggesting the "protocol was about bringing peace and now it is doing the reverse" on BBC Radio Four's Today programme.

Ultimately, unionists want the new Irish Sea border ditched, but Article 16 is designed to fix problems around the new trade barrier not remove it.

Those problems might be easier to fix now with a bruised Brussels trying desperately to repair the protocol's protective glass.

Mending political relationships might not be as easily fixed.