As the European Union’s ambassador to London, João Vale de Almeida had a ringside seat for the chaos overwhelming British politics last year, when all eyes were on the missteps, scandals and resulting downfalls of two prime ministers in quick succession.

Under either of the ousted prime ministers, Mr. Vale de Almeida indicated, prospects were dim for resolving one of the most serious conflicts contributing to rocky post-Brexit relations between Britain and the European Union: the trade status of Northern Ireland.

But the relationship has shifted significantly with the rise of a new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, Mr. Vale de Almeida said, culminating on Monday when Mr. Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the E.U.’s executive arm, the European Commission, struck a deal to resolve their Northern Ireland dispute.

That breakthrough, Mr. Vale de Almeida said, opened a path not only to greater cooperation between Brussels and London, but also between Europe and the United States, in confronting common challenges like Russian aggression and rising tension with China, where Western cooperation is essential.

“If Sunak gets enough support for the deal, we can see this as a new beginning,” Mr. Vale de Almeida, who completed his assignment in London late last year, said in an interview. “With the E.U., the U.K. and the U.S., there is a triangular dimension.”

The agreement followed an era of unrivaled mistrust under Mr. Sunak’s two most recent predecessors, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, and Mr. Vale de Almeida said the accord illustrated growing European faith in the new British prime minister.

The deal, called the Windsor Framework, outlines mechanisms to smooth trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom without impeding trade across Northern Ireland’s land border with Ireland, an E.U. member country.

Understand the Deal Over the Northern Ireland Protocol

Healing a Brexit wound. Britain and the European Union struck a landmark agreement to end a festering dispute over post-Brexit trade rules known as the Northern Ireland Protocol, potentially resolving one of the most poisonous legacies of Britain’s exit from Europe’s trade bloc in 2020. Here’s what to know about the dispute and the renegotiated agreement:

What is at issue? Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, but it shares a land border with Ireland, an E.U. member. Negotiators have struggled to find a way to allow goods to move smoothly between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, without threatening the open border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.

What is the Northern Ireland Protocol? The original protocol, signed in 2020, effectively left Northern Ireland half inside the European system and half inside the British one. The Irish border remained open, but that meant that to enforce differing customs rules, goods had to be checked when they crossed between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Why was this a problem? The system of customs checks effectively created a trade border inside of Britain, down the Irish Sea. Some British companies stopped shipping goods to Northern Ireland, blaming the added paperwork. The situation enraged some Conservative Party lawmakers and many of Northern Ireland’s unionists — the largely Protestant part of the territory that wants to remain in Britain.

How does the new deal address this? The latest agreement, called the Windsor Framework, looks to smooth over some of the  original protocol’s contradictions. One way is by creating a “green lane” with little bureaucracy for goods traveling from Britain to Northern Ireland that are destined to stay there. Goods headed on to Ireland will use a “red lane,” with full checks.

What is at stake? Some in Brussels have spoken of a threat to the integrity of the E.U.’s single economic market, while some in London and Belfast have warned of a threat to the coherence of the United Kingdom. There are also concerns about the fragility of peace in Northern Ireland, a region where decades of sectarian violence left thousands dead.

Tension over the status of Northern Ireland has bedeviled negotiators since Britain voted in 2016 to withdraw from the bloc. In 2020, both sides ratified a withdrawal agreement negotiated by Mr. Johnson that kept goods flowing freely across the Irish border, but infuriated many people in Northern Ireland by hampering the territory’s trade with Great Britain.

Mr. Johnson and Ms. Truss then backed legislation to allow Britain to renege on parts of the deal they had approved, angering E.U. officials. Mr. Sunak agreed to drop that plan, while securing some new concessions on behalf of Northern Ireland.

The United States also helped resolve a vexed dispute, said Mr. Vale de Almeida, one of Europe’s most experienced diplomats, who has also served as E.U. ambassador to the Washington and to the United Nations. President Biden, who values his Irish heritage, had made it clear that a negotiated solution was needed if there were to be a presidential visit to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended years of sectarian bloodshed.

“It played a role, the U.S.,” said Mr. Vale de Almeida, who is about to take up a visiting fellowship at Columbia University. “I think it was important that the U.S. was very clear that this situation should have no impact on the Good Friday Agreement and that we needed to find a solution.”

The new agreement draws a line under a period of almost open hostility between London and Brussels during which Mr. Johnson and his Brexit negotiator, David Frost, adopted combative tactics. The effect was felt sharply by Mr. Vale de Almeida, a Portuguese national, who opened the European Union’s first embassy in London once Britain had left three years ago — only to find that, in the fractious aftermath of Brexit, the red carpet was not being rolled out.

“It started in the worst possible way,” he said, recalling how Mr. Johnson’s government at first refused to give him full diplomatic privileges.

By a quirk of fate, Mr. Vale de Almeida and Mr. Johnson were already acquainted — as adversaries. Three decades earlier, Mr. Vale de Almeida was a media spokesman for the European Commission, and Mr. Johnson was a reporter in Brussels for The Daily Telegraph, writing articles, often plainly false, that pilloried the European Union.

Mr. Vale de Almeida insists there are no hard feelings, either for Mr. Johnson’s youthful writings about Brussels or for the snub inflicted on the E.U. ambassador. He said he respected Mr. Johnson’s intelligence and — perhaps a backhanded compliment to a former journalist — his “creativity.”

“The last time I saw him,” Mr. Vale de Almeida said, “we shook hands, there was a big hug and a big, ‘See you next time.’”

But he makes no attempt to hide his view that Mr. Johnson and Ms. Truss were the roadblocks to a deal on Northern Ireland, the contours of which were visible already last year.

“They didn’t really want to go into negotiation at the time — never really until Rishi Sunak,” he said. Before Mr. Sunak came to power, the European Union’s strategy in London was to avoid a complete collapse in relations, keep channels of communication open and insist that there was “life after Brexit.”

On the Northern Ireland issue, ties with the United States were good. “We were in close touch with the Americans all the way sharing information in good terms,” Mr. Vale de Almeida said.

And by the time he left London, the ice there had melted. Three members of Mr. Sunak’s cabinet, including the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, were at Mr. Vale de Almeida’s farewell party.

The goal now, he said, was to keep improving relations among the European Union, Britain and the United States, “and to foster our geostrategic agenda which is to be as united as possible against common enemies.”

Mr. Vale de Almeida, who will lead a course at Columbia about the tide of populism in Western politics, feels that his recent experiences have provided useful teaching material.

“I think Brexit is a good case study,” he said. “I think I had a crash course on populism in Britain.”

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