Brexit: UK shouldn't try to rejoin EU but it can stop moving further away – Brian Wilson

The obvious question about Rishi Sunak’s deal with the EU over Northern Ireland is why did it take so long?

The concept of red lanes and green lanes should not have needed years of tortured debate. Complexity involving every product going to or through the north of Ireland seems a small price to pay for a resolution. Ireland’s well-practised smuggling industry will embrace fresh opportunities, but “the border” has enabled crime for decades, so nothing new there.

Let’s not forget that the problem Mr Sunak may have helped resolve was created exclusively by Brexit, of which he was an enthusiastic supporter. Amending the consequences of one’s own handiwork scarcely rates as an historic achievement, but is welcome nonetheless.

Whether the Windsor Framework, presumably so-named to appeal to the DUP, leads to the restoration of Stormont remains to be seen. The DUP will follow its own survival interests and if the mood within its base edges towards weary acceptance, the leadership will follow.

Rishi Sunak greets EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Windsor this week (Picture: Dan Kitwood/WPA pool/Getty Images)

Beyond the Windsor Framework, there is the wider fact that intelligent life exists in relations between the UK and the EU. Boris Johnson complained that Sunak’s agreement will “act as a drag anchor on divergence – and there’s no point in Brexit unless you do things differently”.

Some might regard that as Sunak’s highest commendation. Fresh division about reversing Brexit would be folly, as Labour is right to recognise. Working constructively within it and ditching further “divergence” is the best available course for any UK Government to follow.