In the post-Brexit era，the dispute over Northern Ireland Protocol has led to a governance predicament，with the intransigence of the parties involved creating a political impasse that posed more problems than the very arrangements set out by the Protocol. The Conservative government criticised the Protocol for creating trade barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland，making the latter a separate part of the UK at the economic and political level，and attempted to rewrite it. There has not been substantive progress in the negotiations between the UK and the EU as both stood firm on key issues and refused to make concessions. And the UK did not soften its stance on the Protocol until Rishi Sunak took office. The Democratic Unionist Party（DUP）insisted significant changes to the Protocol be a precondition for its returning to the power-sharing institutions，which left the region in political limbo hindering the capability of the local government to deal effectively with challenges from the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis. The nationalist party Sinn Fein Party，has beaten the DUP to become the biggest party in Northern Ireland’s Assembly for the first time. Although combined with opinion polls，the election result is not sufficient to declare that the nationalists are in the majority，it suggests that Irish nationalism is on the rise in this region. In this case，pragmatism is needed for the UK to prevent political instability from causing more problems.