Rishi Sunak hasn’t been able to claim many successes as prime minister.
But as he arrived in Stormont at daybreak to mark the return of power-sharing in Northern Ireland, this was a victory lap he deserved to run.
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Two years to the day after the Democratic Unionist Party triggered the collapse of Stormont in a row over Brexit, the Assembly was up and running again after months of – in the words of the PM – “painstaking and patient work” – behind the scenes between the UK government and the DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson to make post-Brexit trading arrangements palatable for unionists.
The deal between the two leaders, which removed most checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain, was enough for Sir Jeffrey to bring his party back to the table as the UK government published the new deal in a document called “Safeguarding the Union”, emblazoned in the colours of the Union Jack.
After two years of no government, the deal also came with £3.3bn in funding for the region which has seen its public finances pushed into the red, its public services in crisis and waves of strikes – with some 15 public sector unions on strike simultaneously last month.
With that in mind, the prime minister didn’t want to appear too valedictory, with quite a muted appearance in Belfast, consisting of photo-ops with his Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar, First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly.
This was before a brief visit to an integrated primary school in Belfast – where the vast majority of schools are split down Protestant and Catholic lines.
Speaking at the school, the PM described the restoration of Stormont as a “historic and important day for the country”.
When I asked him whether he, like the new first minister of Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein’s Ms O’Neill, believed a referendum on the reunification of Ireland would happen in the decade, he told me that was…
