Answer: LONDON — Britain set itself on course for a new confrontation with the European Union on Tuesday by demanding the replacement of one of the most complex and vexing components of Brexit: the status of Northern Ireland.
In a speech to diplomats in Lisbon, David Frost, the Conservative government’s Brexit minister, asked for an overhaul of an agreement on post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom but shares a politically sensitive land border with Ireland, a European Union country.
The move is a serious escalation in a simmering dispute over how Northern Ireland fits into the British withdrawal from the European Union. Mr. Frost’s proposed new text for the trade rules, called the Northern Ireland protocol, discards some elements that Prime Minister Boris Johnson agreed to less than two years ago and contains ideas the European Union has already rejected.
“We now face a very serious situation — the protocol is not working,” Mr. Frost said, arguing that instead of protecting a fragile peace process in Northern Ireland, the agreement was doing the opposite.
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