Goods and issues which pose the most pressing concerns have been addressed first, but the same framework provides a basis for future agreement in other areas.
By overselling what it has achieved, the Government risks setting unrealistic expectations and limiting its future room for manoeuvre.
“The problems faced by Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson – and indeed George Osborne and David Cameron – are different from the crises and challenges we face today.”
Basic services – the NHS, policing, schools, road maintenance, refuse collection, you name it – have gone to rack and ruin. Life expectancy has fallen sharply. We still have, to our shame, by far the worst drug death levels in Europe.
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.
Rename the whole project to reflect its truly unifying nature and let more of Britain, Scotland and Northern England be connected by the “steel threads”.
The Scottish Secretary, understated in his public utterances, “often makes the wittiest interjections in Cabinet discussions”.
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.
There is no point having Westminster build safeguards into devolution legislation if no government will actually use them.
At the heart of the controversy lies the concerns of many women’s groups that a policy of self-ID of gender will leave women and girls vulnerable to males abusing the system to gain access to spaces reserved to females.
The most likely-looking outcome, at this point, is the same one which has marked the entire process: another deadline from the Government coming and going.
The first and best allies of the campaign for independence have always been pro-UK politicians who think they can buy it off.
Labour cannot dismantle the British nation as a political community and expect it to long endure as a taxpaying one.
The Scottish Conservatives claim that £1.5 million of public money has been spent trying to build the SNP’s case for independence.
The Northern Ireland Protocol has been a stone in the shoe of our relations with Brussels and Washington. The Prime Minister deserves great credit for making progress.