The noises coming out of No 10 ahead of the prime minister’s visit to Northern Ireland had been rather more conciliatory. Obviously, there was no admission from Boris Johnson that he had actually negotiated and signed the deal involving the NI protocol, but that was always going to be a step too far. There’s only so much reality the Convict can take at any one time. And the bigger the truth, the harder he finds it to accept.
But at least Johnson had this time bothered to get someone with a working knowledge of some of the sensitivities endemic to Northern Ireland to write the 2,000-word opinion piece on his behalf for the Belfast Telegraph. Normally, he’d have just scribbled something off the top of his head in about 30 minutes. This time there was an awareness that he needed to produce something that in some way acknowledged the presence of both the nationalists and the unionists. Not to mention the EU.
