In Westminster, the corridors are audibly alive: 24 hours ago MPs took delivery of the Windsor framework, the agreement that is (supposedly) going to fix the problem of the Northern Ireland protocol; listen hard and you can hear the strange sound of those who, having voted leave, are now loudly celebrating the province’s unique access to EU markets. And yes, Andrea Leadsom, arch-leaver and (briefly) business secretary under Boris Johnson, is as thrilled as any of them.
Maybe we should all move to Northern Ireland, I say, rolling my eyes in the hope of impeding her contorted paean of praise to this “fantastic” arrangement. After all, according to Rishi Sunak, it’ll soon be the world’s most exciting economic zone. But she’s impervious to sarcasm. “You can, if you’d like to,” she says. “You absolutely can!” Her tone is enthusiastic to the point of rapture. If she pressed a leaflet into my hand extolling the virtues of Antrim and Newry, I’d hardly be surprised.
