The Northern Ireland Protocol is a disaster, the product of an unequal treaty the Government had no choice but to sign. It is costing the Province’s economy an estimated £2.5 million a day and the border down the Irish Sea, severing a sovereign nation in two, saddles locals with checks that have affected the movement of vital goods

All this threatens to spill over into political chaos. The EU has long claimed, falsely, that Britain’s membership of the bloc was pivotal to the success of the Good Friday Agreement, yet it is Brussels’s dangerous intransigence, disregarding the principle of cross-community consent, that now threatens to undo decades of hard work.

So it is to be welcomed that Liz Truss, who has been handed responsibility for the Protocol, lays out on this page strong negotiating lines putting the defence of the Union first: no part of the UK should be unable to benefit from decisions on tax and spend, she writes, and goods moving within the country, destined for the domestic market, should not be subject to checks. There must be no role for the European Court of Justice as final arbiter of disputes: independent arbitration is the norm in international agreements, and the desperate bid to carve out a role for the ECJ betrays a disingenuous attempt to trap the UK within Brussels’s orbit, to humiliate a nation that dared to vote for independence.

There is room for compromise – but Ms Truss concludes, wisely, that she is willing to invoke Article 16, allowing for unilateral safeguarding measures, just as the EU once did to control the flow of vaccines (again, betraying its claim to be even-handed and humane). The UK’s position is crystal clear and correct. It is up to the EU to compromise, and it must do so soon.