“As the deluge subsides and the waters fall short,” Winston Churchill wearily complained after the First World War, “we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again.”
Our modern day Churchill wannabe (he’s even started painting on holiday) must feel much the same. Boris Johnson has no interest in Northern Ireland. He can win no votes there. There is scant evidence of him ever having visited the province before he achieved high office. He once compared its border with the Republic of Ireland to London’s congestion charge zone – a statement of astounding ignorance matched only by Karen Bradley’s admission, as Northern Ireland secretary, that she had not realised “nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa”.
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