Devil in the Detail

Labour, Conservatives, and most recently the UUP presented fine optics at their respective conferences. Leaders who said a lot about nothing we didn't know already, at best. Boris was Boris, delivering what everyone in the Conference Centre expected of Boris. Sir Keir and Doug Beattie presented speeches that didn't alarm the horses. At least Sir Keir started to articulate a Labour Party of his own design. All the backdrops, bright lights, dancers and comedians (for once, not the politicians) still left a sense of something absent from the UUP.

More structured and very well crafted was the speech given by Lord Frost in Portugal, which outlined what the UK expects from a future relationship with the EU and, yes, the NI Protocol. This builds on previous actions and papers, so there is pathway in place from the UK - a plan. We had to record the Podcast before the EU announced what it wanted everyone to focus on when it published the bureaucrats' response to difficulties only a few months ago the EU claimed didn't exist. The EU also claimed it would not re-negotiate the NI Protocol. Yet here we are, with the EU about to enter intense negotiations on the NI Protocol. Never say never.