Making a proper job of repeal was always going to take years of work. Yet the relevant legislation wasn’t even tabled until Liz Truss became prime minister.
By stripping back the planned repeal of EU laws, she hopes to get the Bill royal assent as soon as possible, rather than see it bogged down in the House of Lords.
Eurosceptic MPs could agree that they wanted to be out of the European Union. But now Brexit is done, they are divided on what it should look like – and the ERG’s power has dimmed accordingly.
Why has the Government signed off a safeguard which Sinn Féin can disable by collapsing Northern Ireland’s devolved institutions again?
It will give cover to Conservative opponents of the deal. But the crucial question is the future of Stormont, and on that the Unionists are silent.
It’s possible that he has pulled off a political coup, begun radically to re-set the UK’s relationship with the EU – and created the circumstances in which voters may give him a second look.
It would be unwise to scupper a deal on data which would allow hands-off, targeted enforcement and free local and mainland-facing Ulster businesses from EU control.
Getting Stormont up and running for the Belfast Agreement’s anniversary in April seems to be setting the pace, but only the DUP can make that happen.
Some Tory members would see such a development as nothing less than an establishment coup: as a conspiracy of bad actors working together to win revenge for Brexit.
Recent reports that ministers may give European judges a role in Ulster ‘forever’ have stoked fears London aims to cut and run.
The ineptitude of its start has contaminated voter views of centre-right values as well as the Conservatives’ opinion poll ratings.
Last week’s confidence vote leaves the Government right about the Protocol’s operability but less capable of acting to improve it.
Baker has infuriated some Tories, but others regard him as the rising hope of the stern unbending Austrian economists.
Looked at in the round, over the 2010-2016 period, the UK had the joint highest growth for a G7 economy, level with the US.
Separate packaging will be needed, and factories on the mainland will need to know in advance which goods are earmarked for Ulster.