The status of Northern Ireland in Johnson’s 2019 Brexit deal always had the potential to be problematical for ministers and as we have seen in the last couple of days things are coming to a head.

There are those who take the view that the details of the Good Friday Agreement which brought the troubles to an end made any exit by the UK from the EU difficult to achieve. For how could the GFA’s commitment to what was effectively an undivided Ireland be assured if one part was in the the EU and the other part wasn’t?

What’s happened is that Northern Ireland has a messy status which is part in the EU and part out. The potential for problems was always going to be there and inevitably, five weeks after Brexit came into effect, we are seeing the difficulties.

An obvious solution is to create a united Ireland something that is total anathema to the DUP. Where this goes now is hard to say.