It’s a fair comment to suggest that last week was not a shining moment for some parts of the British establishment. Suggesting that Leo Varadkar was taking a hard line on Brexit because he was afraid of losing Fine Gael votes to Sinn Féin tells us more about a tenuous grasp on Irish politics than it does about the taoiseach. Mr Varadkar is 100 per cent Irish, by the way, lest any in more northern climes have any doubt. I suspect you wouldn’t find a single member of Dáil Éireann who’d say otherwise, and proud of that we should be. Turns out that maybe old Enoch Powell left more of himself behind in Ulster than we thought.

The criticisms of the taoiseach have not been